


Tears of August

by daisyqiaolianmay (skinman)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: ....idk if that counts, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Mom clarke, Post-Season/Series 02, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, dad bellamy, delinquents raise a baby, i don't wanna spoil but its gonna be cute okay, i promise to get them together within the first 120 years, i've always wanted to use that tag this is so exciting, is someone salty?, lotsa miscommunication, mayhaps..., slow as it can be when i am not planning on making this fic a Monster, still quicker than canon though, well... past fake/pretend/implied bangin, whats cuter than bellamy with a baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2019-06-27 11:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 79,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15684921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skinman/pseuds/daisyqiaolianmay
Summary: *~Nominated for BFWA's 'Best Canon Works-in-Progress'~*...When Clarke runs away at the end of season 2, instead of going north, she goes south, and stays gone for seven months. When she returns, she's not alone....“He’s not mine,” she whispered.“What?” Bellamy’s stomach turned.Clarke stared into his eyes, keeping her voice quiet and desperate. “Please, Bellamy. You don’t understand. The grounders believe in purifying their bloodlines. I don’t know what they’d do if they knew I saved him… they’d say I interfered. They'd take him. I don’t know if... some of them might even want him dead.”“Clarke, I don’t-”She grabbed his hand and held it tight, checking over her shoulder. “Listen, okay. I’m his mother now, and I always will be, but he wasn’t always mine, Bellamy. I found him.”





	1. Pain gon Natshana

This wasn’t part of the plan at all. In fact this was almost the exact opposite of the plan. She wasn’t completely sure what the plan was in its entirety, but she knew the first step was running, and this really threw a wrench in things.

 

Clarke had been checking traps. Quite satisfied with herself, two rabbits tied together and slung over her shoulders, silent as any grounder, she’d slipped between the trees, careful to avoid drawing attention in any way, leaving no tracks. She’d thought it was an animal at first, the cries coarse and weak, almost hopeless. But, if she’d truly been able to believe it was just an animal, she’s sure would have walked the other way… and she didn’t.

 

It took her a minute to locate the source. Crouching in the undergrowth, she parted a thicket of ferns, drawing in a shuddering breath, eyes widening when the reality of the moment hit her.

 

The baby was naked, and not moving except to tremble. He must be freezing. Though it was a warm spring this year, and they were further south than Clarke had ever been, there was a fair breeze drifting off the sea sat only a mile to the east. Ripping her pack off her back, she dragged out her only two spare, mostly clean shirts, and instinctively scooped the baby boy up, swaddling him tightly.

 

Her mind was racing too fast to recall all the postnatal care she’d been taught when she’d been training with medical. There weren’t a whole lot of babies born on the Ark. She’d been present at five births. She didn’t remember much now, but she recognised one thing; this baby was young, really young. He couldn’t be much more than a week old. His umbilical stump was gone, but the scab that had formed there was still healing. It wasn’t his only injury either. The boy had bruising around his shoulders, but she supposed that might have happened during the birth, and there was a rash on his arms and back Clarke was sure was just from the fern he’d been left in. Even then, Clarke wasn’t an idiot…. a baby this young, left naked in the middle of the woods. He’d been abandoned. It was common practice when grounder babies were born too small or with deformities. Just… Clarke hadn’t immediately seen anything like that before she’d swaddled him. Resting the child against her chest, Clarke attempted to shush him, tucking him in her jacket, and leaning her chin down so his head was as exposed as little as possible.

 

His hair was soft and almost black, thicker than any hair she’d seen on a child this small, with skin a pallid golden brown, and eyes so large and dark they almost didn’t seem to fit on his face.

 

“Hey,” Clarke whispered as she rocked him slowly against her, glad when he whimpered in response, “I’ve got you.” Unwrapping the makeshift swaddling, and checking him over, she stroked his tiny fingers, counting them; five, all perfect with little nails attached. Then she moved to his feet, and her face fell; one, two, three, four, five… six. A tiny protrusion, an extra little toe, poking at an angle from between what would normally be considered his fourth and fifth toes, out of the shell pink soles of his two feet. Clarke sighed. Such a small thing, maybe could have caused some mobility issues later on, but a small operation could quickly remove the sixth toe before then without much issue. Grounders could be a superstitious bunch, she supposed; it wasn’t like she could judge that hard, it wasn’t like the Ark had never practiced eugenics to some extent. If she got him to her mom, they could fix him, make sure he never had to worry about walking, or being rejected for his deformity. Clarke shook her head, she couldn’t go back. It had been six months at least, almost seven. The longer she stayed away, the harder it got to think about going home as an option. But, if she didn’t, she was left with the issue of what to do with the baby.

 

Cursing to herself, Clarke clambered to her feet, throwing her pack onto her back, and grabbing the rabbits, she marched back to her current hideout. It wasn’t far, and the baby was too weak to really cry, so hopefully she managed to go unnoticed. Apparently the warmth and movement lulled him to sleep, despite his empty stomach. She needed to find a way to feed him.

 

Once the fire was stoked and letting forth a steady heat, Clarke removed one of the shirts from around the baby and dipped it in a bucket of fresh water she’d collected. Gently brushing it against the baby’s lips, she prayed he’d begin to drink. As he moved his lips to suckle, Clarke sighed in relief. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would stop him being dehydrated for now. She had no idea how she was going to keep this baby alive without finding a source of milk. It over a weeks journey to make it back to Arkadia, and it’s not like she could drag a goat along with her, even if she managed to find and steal one. She couldn’t take the main paths, there were people looking for her… or rather, looking for Wanheda. Wanheda with a baby, what kind of sick irony was that.

 

* * *

 

Clarke couldn’t sleep. The baby cried softly for hours, red faced with tears, until Clarke couldn’t stand it anymore, heartstrings throughly tugged. He was still hungry.

 

Finding the thickest fur she had she wrapped it around him and then used a long strip of cloth she used as a sling for collecting wood to tether him to her, before slipping her jacket on and pulling the hood up. There was a grounder hamlet not far from here, though in the opposite direction from where she’d found junior, so probably not where he came from. There she might be able to sneak in and skim some food suitable for a baby.

 

Trudging through the dark, the rhythmic movement seeming to distract him for now. Maybe she should have left him in the cave, but some instinct had told her he’d be safer if she took him with her. His cries could attract animals if he’d got too loud. Plus… a part of her didn’t want him to feel abandoned again.

 

Calculating her approach, Clarke chose the small structure sat fairly centrally as where the food must be kept, it looked like ones she’d seen in other grounder villages.

 

‘You have to really quiet now baby,” Clarke muttered into the child’s hair.

 

He remained still and didn’t make a sound, which she took as a good omen. The structure wasn’t locked, only tied with a rope and complicated knot that she struggled with a minute.

 

Clarke had grown eerily used to the feel of the cool edge of a blade against her neck.

 

“Nou step au,” a clear, harsh voice said from behind her. ‘ _Don’t move.’_

 

“Ai laik gon nou,” Clarke promised, holding her hands up so they could be seen. _‘I am unarmed.’_ Not technically true, with small knife strapped to her ankle, inside her boot wrappings, but it might get the grounder to calm down.

 

“Gou raun,” the voice demanded. _‘Turn around.’_

 

Keeping her hands up, Clarke began to turn. She shook a little, hoping she had come far enough from home that this grounder wouldn’t know who she was... what she was.

 

The grounder was only a little taller than Clake, a woman around her mother’s age, with the facial tattoos of a warrior, like Indra’s. Long hair braided back from her face. With Clarke’s hands still up, her jacket was pulled back from her chest making the baby visible. Clarke resisted the urge to bring her hands back down to him; to protect him.

 

He squirmed against her and the grounder lowered her gaze from Clarke’s face, eyes widening.

 

“Skrish,” the woman cursed to herself, noticing the baby, her sword wavering.

 

Clarke prayed to any and every god that this village wasn’t where the baby had come from. “Beja. Em's enti, en ai can nou fed em,” Clarke pleaded with the woman. _‘Please. He’s hungry, and I can’t feed him.’_

 

The grounder’s jaw tensed. “Wha laik yu lone?”

 

Why was Clarke alone? Because she was stubborn. Because she was scared, and angry at herself. Because she was a murderer.

 

“Osir weer nor goin. Osir weer sever,” Clarke lied deftly. ‘ _We were headed north. We got seperated.’_

 

The grounder finally lowered her blade and gestured to the baby. “Yu laik i's nomon?” _‘You are it’s mother?’_

 

Clarke nodded slowly. It was the easiest lie to maintain. Plenty of mothers found it difficult to breastfeed. It wasn’t unbelievable. Clarke remember when Rooney McOrson had her baby on the Ark, she’d struggled and cried for a week before Abby had insisted she needed to take medication to induce lactation. Clarke realised suddenly. Rooney… she hadn’t been in Arkadia. Clarke blinked back tears and tried not to think about what she knew that meant.

 

The grounder watched Clarke’s eyes begin to well with tears, and seemed to take pity.

 

“Come goufa.” Her features softened and she beckoned for Clarke to follow her.

 

Clarke let out a breath of relief, hands lowering to rest against the baby.

 

“Yu don a tagon?” The woman asked. _‘You have a name?’_

 

“Octavia.” She winced as soon as she said it. Feeling weird, almost like she was stealing it. But, she couldn’t use her real name, and she didn’t want to appear to waver, so she’d simply said the first name that came to mind.

 

“En yu goufa?” The woman inquired as they reached the door of a barn, the shuffling of animals to be heard inside. She turned to face Clarke. _‘And your child?’_

 

“Nu tagon. Ni forg.” Clarke looked down at the baby, brow furrowed. _‘No name. Not yet.’_ Maybe she should give him a name… she was as well positioned as anyone to do it. Then again, he’d probably be adopted when she got him back to Arkadia, and his new parents might choose a different one.

 

“Ha kriken? Em ste foto kom bants a goufa untagon.” The woman’s expression morphed into one of worry. _‘How old? It is bad luck to leave a child unnamed.’_

 

“Ai don gou.” Clarke smiled a little. _‘I have time.’_

 

“Taim,” the woman corrected Clarke and shook her head, smiling knowingly.

 

Clarke looked at her in confusion.

 

“Your trigedasleng needs work, little skaigoufa.” The woman didn’t stop smiling.

 

Clarke’s jaw clenched tightly, she wrapped her hands closer around the baby, taking a step back.

 

“Calm yourself. I am Gelma, the leader of this village. I will not harm you,” she promised, finally slipping her sword into her belt. “Come. I will help you feed your child.”

 

Clarke still wasn’t sure of this, but she had no other way of getting the baby fed than this.

 

“We’ve heard stories of those that fell from the sky, even here.” Gelma made her way through the braying goats, and knelt to pull up a hatch buried in the earth.

 

Clarke didn’t cover her nose. There were far worse smells than that of a dozen unwashed goats hanging out in their own muck, she knew that now. And, if she was going to take care of this baby for now, she would have get used to poo pretty quick.

 

Gelma emerged from hatch with a large gourd. “Sit.”

 

Clarke did as she was told, placing herself on an upturned bucket. Unwrapping the baby from the sling, she cradled him, still naked apart from the furs. He yawned and then opened his eyes to blink at her, reaching up a tiny pudgy hand, he seemed to grasp for her. He was too young for that, Clarke thought, but it was the impression she got all the same.

 

“Here,” Clarke said softly, placing her little finger in his grasp, “hold on tight, and don’t let go, okay?”

 

The little boy did as he was told. He turned his face to nuzzle her chest; definitely hungry then.

 

“Dip your finger, and see if he will take it.” Gelma grabbed another bucket so she could sit beside Clarke, and offered her the gourd full of milk.

 

Clarke rubbed some of the liquid on his lips, and breathed out in relief when he immediately moved them. Pulling the same cloth she’d soaked in water for him out of her pocket she handed it to Gelma and trusted she knew that to do.

 

Gelma doused the cloth in milk and handed it back. Getting up quickly, and leaving the barn.

 

Clarke watched her go, hoping she’d simply gone to fetch something. Clarke hoisted the baby against her shoulder and placed the cloth against his lips for him to suck on. Leaning her forehead against his, listening to him eat, Clarke felt her shoulders relax. He wasn’t going to die… that was a start.

 

Gelma returned a few minutes later, another large gourd in hand. She presented it to Clarke. “My daughter required this when her daughter was born. It will help to feed him. There is still a chance you can feed him yourself. I will give you the recipe.”

 

Clarke’s eyes widened. No… she wasn't. She couldn’t. He wasn’t really _hers_. Except… she couldn’t tell Gelma that. Even the nicest people could be superstitious. She might force Clarke to leave him out there again. Clarke would die before she let another innocent child suffer when she could stop it.

 

“Two sips every four hours, even at night.” Gelma held the gourd out further.

 

“Thank you,” Clarke said, unsure, accepting the gift gracefully. There was a nausea medication her mom prescribed that had been what she’d also given Rooney to help her feed her baby. It didn’t surprise Clarke too much that a remedy existed in nature to rectify such a common issue. “Why are you helping me?” Clarke asked curiously.

 

“I will not have a child starve, no matter its mother.” Gelma held her chin up, eyes focused on where the baby was still feeding on the goats milk. “Come, Octavia kom Skaikru,” she said again, “I will find you a place to sleep.”

 

“Oh… oh no, I-” Clarke shook her head. She couldn’t stay.

 

“For the child’s sake, please.” Gelma’s gaze was intense.

 

Clarke conceded silently, pulling herself up, keeping the baby steady, she made sure he was wrapped up before following Gelma out into the open.

 

Seeing a tiny light out the corner of her eye, Clarke looked up to see small bursts of white light streaming across the night sky; shooting stars. Mouth falling open, Clarke faltered, “oh…” She remembered lights like this, and the question she’d asked Bellamy, though it seemed so long ago now. Now _these_ were the kind of shooting stars you could wish on. Clarke wondered if Bellamy and the others could see these at Arkadia.

 

“We call them ‘ _pain gon natshana_ ’, the tears of the moon. You should see them in August, when the summer sun is setting for the year and the stars ride in great numbers all across the darkness. The tears of August are a beautiful thing,” Gelma informed her softly.

 

“The tears of August…” Clarke muttered to herself. She didn’t know why the poetry of those words struck her so. At her chest the baby wriggled, as if suddenly feeling the cool air hit his exposed face, he let out a cry. Clarke looked down to see single tears emerging from eyes that were almost black, the light from the moon and stars reflected in them, his cries growing only louder. Clarke felt something… something _like_ love strike her then, happy as she was to hear from him stronger cries than she’d ever heard.

 

“August,” Clarke said with finality.

 

Gelma turned to regard Clarke quizzically.

 

“His name is August,” Clarke decided.

 

Gelma let forth a smile that wasn’t exactly a grin, but certainly gave that effect. “Let’s find August somewhere to sleep then, Skaigoufa.”

 

Skaigoufa was one of the better nicknames she’d been given. She’d take it over Wanheda any day.

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke told herself she’d stay a few days. Then a few days became a week, and then a week became a few weeks.

 

August was… August was everything. She didn’t know how it had happened; one day she was on the run, the next she had a new baby and new friends. Every day August got stronger and more perfect and she struggled to understand how she could care this much about someone. Suddenly she understood her own mother so much better than she had before.

 

The scab on his belly had healed without issue, and his hair had grown in even thicker and darker and curlier than before. She kept his feet wrapped up always, letting no one bathe him but herself, just in case. Gelma had cornered her about the feeding. Clarke had been reluctant, and embarrassed, pretty sure not even the medication they’d had on the Ark could induce a woman who hadn’t given birth to be able to feed a baby. Thing is, Gelma had no idea August wasn’t Clarke’s, and that was how Clarke planned to keep it. Swallowing her pride was a small price to pay to keep him safe and fed. The strangest part was that taking the draught when and as she was told had seemed to work, though August still needed a little goats milk from time to time too. Sometime between that first night and now, perhaps most of all when she held him to her chest, Clarke forgot that to begin with she hadn’t planned to keep him. They were each other’s now.

 

“He’s growing so fast,” Cullan praised the little boy, unabashedly peering over Clarke’s shoulder as she fed him. Cullan, Gelma’s daughter, was the picture of her mother, but without the intimidating eyes. Her eyes were green and wide and inviting instead. Clarke wasn’t ashamed to admit she might have a slight crush on the woman, though her thoughts were too distracted by someone else these days to think on that type of thing. Cullan was the only other member of the little village who knew Clarke wasn’t who she said she was. Even Gelma and Cullan still didn’t know the whole truth, or even her real name, and they didn’t push to know, which Clarke appreciated.

 

“It’s because he never stops eating,” Clarke huffed, stroking her son’s chubby, rosy, pale gold cheek as he suckled eagerly.

 

Cullan let out a short laugh, sitting down beside Clarke on her cot. “All babies are much the same. You can see he’s going to be very handsome. I suppose his father was so,” Cullan smiled at Clarke suggestively.

 

Cullan didn’t know that there had been no father. Clarke thought back to her last… whatever it was; her mind filled with thoughts of Finn that soon turned sour, remembering what he’d done, what she’d done. Her eyes darkening, she shoved all thought of Finn aside.

 

“He must have been strong, dark, beautiful, I’m sure, like his son,” Cullan said, all but giggling to herself.

 

Then, without any warning, Clarke found herself wondering what Bellamy was doing. Thinking of his dark curls and eyes and golden, freckled skin. She frowned down at August. Heat rose in her cheeks. Exactly what her brain was trying to tell her muddled by complicated feelings and some deeply repressed emotions.

 

Cullan grinned at Clarke’s increasingly pink complexion. “I think perhaps your face betrays that he was.”

 

Clarke tried to banish all thought of Bellamy from her mind, swallowing roughly as her cheeks grew hotter, mouth pursed tightly.

 

“I apologise if I made you uncomfortable by asking.” Cullan squeezed Clarke’s shoulder gently.

 

Clarke sent back a tight-lipped smile. Cullan’s question had raised one other thought to the surface.

 

“I have to go home. August’s over a month old, he’s strong enough now,” Clarke thought aloud, “my mom… she… she’ll be waiting.” _‘She’s probably worried I’m dead,’_ Clarke berated herself silently. She might not be on the best of terms with her mom, but she didn’t want her thinking that. Clarke couldn’t imagine, if August left her, disappeared for six months. Clarke felt horribly sick at the suggestion. Bellamy… he might think she’s dead too. ‘ _May we meet again_ ,’ his last words to her, and hers to him, now yet another reason she had to go home; she’d all but promised they would see each other again.

 

Then a third reason, the most important one, Clarke thought, holding August’s tiny, swaddled feet easily in one hand. It wasn’t a problem now, but it would be by the time he started trying to walk, and she couldn’t wait that long to get it sorted. She needed to be home, even if she had to face the consequences of what she’d done, her mom would look after August, or find someone worthy to do it instead, she was sure of it.

 

August had finished eating and seemed content, opening his tiny hand to look like a golden starfish, lying against the pale skin of her chest. She adjusted her shirt and brought him closer so she could kiss his soft brow. His eyes closed peacefully, thick dark lashes resting against his cheeks, button nose screwed as he wriggled further into her hold. She almost never put him down, keeping him in a sling at her chest almost constantly, as the grounder women did. On the Ark that was considered indulgence, but all Clarke knew was that it felt right. She felt off center without him now.

 

“Octavia, is his father dead?” Cullan suddenly asked softly.

 

Clarke’s thoughts of Bellamy and Finn returned with a fervour. She could almost feel the pressure of Finn’s flesh as she’d slipped the knife under his ribs. She’d killed the boy she loved. And Bellamy, she could see the heartbreak and worry on his face, tired, dark eyes pleading her not to leave, as she’d abandoned him all those months back. The warmth of his cheek as she’s pressed a kiss against his freckles, hoping it wasn’t the last time. She needed to go home.

 

“My real name is Clarke,” she said softly, fed up of being afraid, and trusting Cullan enough not to betray her, tears beginning to trail down her cheeks, “Clarke kom Skaikru, and I need to go home now.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Selene is my gentlest mare. She will take good care of you and your boy, Skaigoufa,” Gelma promised stroking the white horse’s face reverently.

 

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Clarke managed to get out, eyes filled with tears.

 

Gelma held Clarke’s face in her hands and kissed both of her cheeks, “Think kindly of us.”

 

Clarke nodded.

 

Gelma leant down to kiss August’s forehead where he slept in his sling.

 

Cullan came forward, her own two year old daughter, Mea, on her hip. “Here,” Cullan handed Clarke a necklace made of plaited thread and adorned with two tiny charms whittled from a mahogany tree; a circle meant to represent a full moon and a slightly smaller star.

 

Clarke was touched. “It’s beautiful.”

 

“For your kru, so you don’t forget yourself again, Skaigoufa.” Cullan didn’t elaborate but reached up to stroke Clarke’s cheek affectionately, before leaning down as her mother had to give August a small kiss.

 

Clarke tied the gift around her neck. Walking over to Selene, the horse stayed resolute as Gelma helped Clarke mount.

 

“Do not travel at night, and stay to the coast. It is safest.” Gelma came forward and slipped the long sword she’d been holding into a sheath attached to the front of the saddle. She grabbed Clarke’s hand and pressed a kiss to the palm before placing the reins in it. “May Bekka Pramheda bless your journey,” Gelma said.

 

“May we meet again,” Clarke responded in kind.

 

“Yes, may we meet again,” Gelma echoed, smiling.

 

Clarke gave them one last sad smile, tapping with her heels and tugging on the horse’s reins, drawing the animal in the direction of home.

 

* * *

 

She was less than a day from Arkadia when she realised someone was tracking her.

 

It was evening, just beginning to grow dark. August had been so good, keeping quiet almost always. He’d always been a content baby, but he was particularly so now, almost like he knew. Clarke suspected that the movement of the horse actually soothed him. She had to stop a few times a day to clean him, but she could usually feed him on the move.

 

All it took was the snap of a twig for Clarke to know something was wrong. It was too harsh a snap, too deliberate. In her mind’s eye she imagined a large man, a cruel look in his eyes, watching her from the woods. She’d kept to the coast like Gelma had said, but at some point she’d needed to come inland to Arkadia.

 

The tail realised they’d been caught as Clarke froze, stilling the horse, turning her head just a little to listen out.

 

“Wanheda, I’m going to need you to dismount,” a gruff voice came from behind her.

 

Clarke trembled slightly, gripping the reins as her knuckles went white. She suddenly felt every breath her son took. August. This man wouldn’t hesitate to kill August.

 

Clarke yelled and dug her heels into the horse so hard she felt bad, mentally noting to give the poor creature some compensation when they got to Arkadia… if they got to Arkadia.

 

The creature set off at a gallop, winding through the trees, and for one shining moment Clarke truly believed she had made it out. Then there was a sharp, distant twang, and an arrow pierced her from behind. Clarke cried out through gritted teeth. August had woken and started to cry loudly. Clarke looked down through welling tears to see August unharmed but startled. Looking past him to her abdomen, she sobbed to see the arrow sticking clean through her right side, choking back tears, trying to keep it together. She just had to get to Arkadia, then at least August would be safe. He would be safe and whatever else happened, she would be okay with.

 

The horse galloped for a long time, until Clarke brought her back to a trot, not wanting her to tire. It was growing darker by the minute. Clarke struggled to stay upright, head pounding, vision blurring. She was sure she was losing blood, her side and upper leg were wet and warm. Bringing her head down to where August was curled up against her chest she muttered into his hair, “I’m so sorry.” Clarke choked out a sob, focusing on the smell of August where he was hidden under her jacket, and the destination she had to reach for his sake.

 

It was the lights she saw first. The first electric lights she’d seen since she left. A white glow to them, like stars against the darkness of the night. They blurred and grew out large under her infirm gaze, blinking hard, she tried to focus, holding tight as she could to the reins. Selene made a steady pace, emerging through the treeline to head up the rise to Arkadia.

 

Clarke vaguely made out the noise, the shouting, the people, as they opened the gates. Someone yelled her name, but it was distant. It was all blurred. Suddenly, someone tall and dressed in black caught her attention, running straight for her while others held back.

 

“Bellamy?” she muttered, more just out of hope, rather than actually recognising him.

 

“God, Clarke,” he gasped, catching her under the arms as she all but fell from the horse, trusting him to be there. He brought her back to her feet.

 

It took all her strength, hissing in pain, to pull her arm through the sling that held August, so she could remove the baby from her chest and pass him to Bellamy. She couldn’t risk fainting with August still in the sling.

 

Bellamy took the package Clarke gave him without thought or question, before realising what exactly it was.

 

Clarke heard his sharp intake of breath, and a questioning, “Clarke, wha...?”

 

“Su… support his head,” was what she managed as she let go of her son, trying to smile reassuringly through the pain.

 

“I’ve held a baby before, Princess,” Bellamy argued softly, still staring wide-eyed at the squirming child.

 

Clarke wanted to respond, but without August it was like the pain in her side suddenly doubled. She heard the baby start to scream, proper screaming like nothing she’d heard from him before, as Bellamy called out her name in horror. Her eyes rolling back in her head, the world faded away.

 

* * *

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000) 

* * *

 

 


	2. Yours and Mine

The first thing Clarke was aware of was that she felt like shit. Her head felt like it had been filled with feathers, her side aching firmly, her breasts aching even more. Where was August? Despite the fact she felt tired to her bones, she forced herself to open her eyes. She groaned. The bright lights of the med bay too white, only intensifying her headache.

 

“Clarke?” Her mother’s anxious face appeared above her.

 

“Mom?” Clarke responded, looking slowly to either side, she couldn’t see anyone else, and she couldn’t see or hear August. Instinctively she knew he wasn’t there. Clarke began to panic, sitting up sharply. She remembered that she’d fainted, but not much else.

 

Clarke,” Abby scalded. “Stay still. You lost a lot of blood.”

 

“Where’s August?” Clarke stared at her mother with wide eyes.

 

Abby looked confused for a brief moment, before her mouth set in a thin line. “The baby?” she said shortly, after a long moment.

 

“How long have I been asleep?” Clarke demanded to know.

 

“Counting your surgery… maybe two days.”

 

“Two days,” Clarke gasped, panicking even more in her muddled drug-heavy state, “I… I need to feed him.”

 

“Clarke.” Abby just looked confused, slowly shaking her head.

 

“I need to see my son!” Clarke yelled, breathing heavily. There was no way half of Arkadia hadn’t heard her.

 

“Okay, I’ll...” Abby stroked Clarke’s arm, speaking in a low tone, “I’ll get him. Just let me adjust your pillows, baby.” Abby did just that, helping Clarke sit up. She slipped through the curtain that kept Clarke separate from the rest of the bay, leaving her daughter to her racing thoughts. This was the first time she’d been without August since she’d found him… when he was alone. She’d promised him. She’d promised he’d never be alone again.

 

“Clarke,” Abby said, reappearing, followed closely by Bellamy.

 

Bellamy look tired, but happy nonetheless, and obviously relieved to see her, as she was to see him. “Hey,” Bellamy said softly. He gently bounced August in his arms somewhat expertly.

 

Clarke quickly remembered that Bellamy had rather a lot to do with Octavia as a baby. Obviously some things had stuck.

 

“I’ll be back in a bit,” Abby said, jaw clenching and unclenching. She left.

 

Clarke decided to put the problem of her mother’s attitude aside for later. She held her arms out, brow furrowed anxiously, but smiling in relief the whole time, “How’s he been?”

 

“Restless, but he’s been eating and sleeping and pooping plenty, all that important stuff,” Bellamy continued with the same gentle tone as he sat on the edge of Clarke’s cot and passed August to her.

 

Clarke brought August close and kissed his nose and cheeks, breathing him in. “I missed you,” she murmured.

 

Bellamy watched curiously as they interacted, the baby suddenly kicking uncoordinatedly, and gurgling happily. Then Clarke reached down and began to pull her shirt up. Bellamy startled, standing and turning away. “Uh… Clarke, what are you-”

 

“Sorry.” Clarke swallowed roughly, blushing. She’d been living with two women who were used to this having fed children themselves. Clarke had given up the modesty pretty quick when she’d got frustrated and needed Gelma to show her how to get August to latch. “I need to feed him. It’s not a big deal, you can turn back around now. I’d feel more awkward talking to your back. Just… can you pass me his blanket?”

 

Bellamy rolled his eyes at the situation. How was this happening? There was no way this could be real. The princess with a baby? It was insane. She left after Mount Weather and turned up seven months later with a newborn. The math was easy, but the logic of it all… that he wasn’t so keen on. He turned back to see Clarke stroking the baby’s dark curls, his head obstructing Bellamy’s view of anything exciting. Meanwhile he kept his eyes on her face; how young and pale and tired she looked. Clarke gazed at August with an expression he'd never seen her use before. It was deeper and more ungarded; no facades; no games to play; no wars to win; no shadow of the princess of the Ark, leader of the deliquents; no Wanheda, just Clarke. Just Clarke and August. It was intimate. Something that Bellamy felt he shouldn’t be privy to, like this was just meant to be between her and the kid. Bellamy breathed out long and hard and pushed through it, grabbing the blanket, he sat back on the bed where he was before, handing it to her. She immediately threw it over her shoulder and arranged it over her chest, so it offered her a bit more modesty, and was ready for when she might need to burp him.

 

For a minute or two they sat in heavy silence.

 

When Bellamy finally garnered the presence to speak, he never got to finish, “Clarke, I have to ask-”

 

“Heard you were awake.” Raven interrupted, barging in without ceremony, curtain rail squeaking. She was smiling wide. Walking up to the side of the bed, she looked from Bellamy to Clarke and down to the baby Clarke was feeding like she was trying to decide something, her smile faltering a little. “Sorry. Is this a bad time, I just… I was worried. I heard you yelling at your mom earlier.”

 

“I’m fine now.” Clarke smiled genuinely, running a hand up and down August’s back. “It’s good to see you, Raven.”

 

“You too. You have no idea. Little guy’s been great. Bellamy’s pretty good with him.” Raven stuck her hands in her pockets, feeling awkward. “You gave us all a hell of a time, Clarke.” Her tone wasn’t so bright now, face turning to one of concern. “Bleeding bad, riding a white horse, baby in tow. You sure know how to make an entrance, Griffin,” Raven huffed.

 

“Sorry if I scared you,” Clarke apologised.

 

Raven shrugged. “Bellamy got the worst of it. I mean, looking after the kid, not sure if you were going to wake up.”

 

Clarke looked to Bellamy, but he was staring down at the bedsheets intently, his mind elsewhere. Shaking off whatever it was, he met her eyes, and then brought them down to August. “We did okay, didn’t we buddy?” He reached out and stroked the baby’s spine with the back of his finger, before retreating quickly as if it was unwanted.

 

“August.” Clarke slipped a finger into her son’s grasp, and caught Bellamy’s eye again, smiling reassuringly. “His name is August.”

 

“August?” Bellamy repeated, almost breathlessly.

 

“There something wrong with that?” Clarke said, his stricken expression somewhat confusing and upsetting her.

 

Bellamy shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck, “No. No, it’s a great name, Clarke.”

 

“Yeah, it’s real cute.” Raven offered, looking a little suspiciously, arms crossed, between Clarke and Bellamy as they continued some sort of silent communication.

 

“Um, Clarke, I’ve been sorting out a bed, for… August,” Bellamy began, breaking from her gaze. “If you want I can bring it in here so you can have him with you at night. I can keep taking him between feeds during the day so you can rest, your mom’s gonna insist someone does it, and I don’t mind.” He moved onto logistics as a distraction.

 

“Thank you,” Clarke sighed. August had finished feeding too quickly and seemed a bit squirmy, rather than sleepy like he was usually. She adjusted her shirt and moved him up to her shoulder, but she couldn’t get the right angle to burp him the way she liked, wincing when she tried to sit up more.

 

“Hey, watch the stitches, Princess,” Bellamy pressed a hand to her shoulder, slowly pushing her back, “I can do it.” He was tucking his hands under August before she could protest, resting him into the crook of his arm. Taking the old blanket from her shoulder to put over his own, he stood. Leaning August against his own shoulder, he began to rub his back like a pro, humming softly.

 

Raven rolled her eyes. “Show off.”

 

“When you’re hiding a baby under the floor, burping becomes life or death, Raven.” Bellamy said it with humour, though Clarke was sure the actual situation hadn’t been funny at the time. The idea of little Bellamy alone in the one room his family had, seven years old, holding his sister close, scared to death her discomfort would turn to cries that would get his mother floated... it made Clarke shiver. 

 

Raven and Clarke discussed briefly what had happened in her sixth month absence, just the gossip more than anything, like how Harper and Monty had been a thing for a while, Octavia only visited every few weeks at the most now, and Miller had got promoted.

While they spoke Bellamy made quick work of August. As soon as it was done he settled the baby back in Clarke’s arms so she could start feeding him again, but all he wanted to seem to do is sleep. Clarke frowned down at him.

“Sorry, I gave him some goats milk about an hour ago. He seemed hungry again and I didn’t know when you were going to wake up.” Bellamy folded his arms and hunched his shoulders awkwardly.

 

“It’s okay,” Clarke answered. Quietly she was pleased with how attentive Bellamy seemed to have been, not that she should expect anything less. Clarke had promised August he wouldn’t be alone, and he hadn’t been. That was good.

 

“Can I hold him?” Raven asked, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Mama bear over here has been super possessive the past 48 hours.” She jerked her head in Bellamy’s direction.

 

“Maybe if you washed your hands once in a while…” Bellamy murmured.

 

“It was just a bit of grease, Bellamy,” Raven protested.

 

“Here,” Clarke said before it could escalate further, holding a sleepy August out to Raven.

 

Once the boy was snuggled in her arms, he was too tired to complain that this wasn’t his mom, and yawned wide, eyes fluttering closed. “Hey, August. I’m your tía,” Raven whispered, suddenly very conscious that she was holding a sleeping newborn. “Clarke, he’s perfect.”

 

Clarke smiled simply; she already knew that.

 

Bellamy alternated the weight on his feet anxiously, arms still folded. “I’ve been keeping him away from everything and everyone. I was worried with him being so little he could catch something, but your mom has been saying he seems strong. He can’t have any vaccinations for another month. Everyone wants to meet him though, properly, once you’re better.”

 

“Mom’s right. He’s stronger than he looks,” Clarke responded.

 

“Aunt Raven only got first dibs cause grandma likes her,” Raven cooed to the sleeping baby, then looked up at Clarke, “Jasper was pissed I managed to get past her. He thinks for some reason he should be godfather.”

 

“I suppose every kid deserves a fun uncle figure,” Bellamy offered.

 

“Yeah, but godfather? It's not even really a thing anymore, and even if it was; Jasper? Monty and Miller are the guys you trust your kid with,” Raven argued, raising a single eyebrow.

 

“How is Jasper?” Clarke asked.

 

“Time heals all wounds, isn’t that what they say?” Bellamy smiled sadly. It had been a long time now since Mount Weather, and talking to Bellamy, talking to Monty, then seeing Clarke in the state she’d come home in, maybe Jasper had found it in himself to forgive, even if he couldn’t forget. He seemed to be trying at least.

 

“I never believed that was true,” Clarke said quietly.

 

“You should get some more sleep,” Bellamy encouraged.

 

Clarke nodded. The quicker she healed, the quicker she could properly care for August. “Okay but... can you stay, with August, until I fall asleep? It doesn’t feel right, not having him here,” Clarke admitted tentatively.

 

* * *

 

 

Bellamy watched Clarke sleep for too long. Longer than might be considered acceptable. Just trying to make sense of everything. How Clarke was suddenly here, and August with her.

 

Bellamy looked down at the infant in his arms, trying to make sense of his dark curls and tawny skin. August couldn’t be Finn’s, Bellamy knew that just looking at him, but ten months ago was the early days of the dropship camp. There was no one else that Bellamy knew of that Clarke had... well, been _interested_ in, but then he’d been somewhat distracted by conquests of his own. Jasper had pointed out the general resemblance in jest yesterday, much to Bellamy’s horror. Bellamy wondered… it was like he… He shook his head to himself, because it didn’t matter anyway. The point was August probably didn’t have a dad, but he had plenty of people who cared about his mom, and that was enough. Bellamy wouldn’t make Clarke explain it of she didn’t want to. Maybe she’d trust him enough to tell him the truth one day.

 

There was something else Bellamy was more concerned by. Having bathed August he’d unwrapped his feet. Unsure what to do about the small deformity, whether to tell Abby or not, Bellamy had just finished washing the baby and waited till he could talk to Clarke.

 

A minute later Bellamy rose from the seat, August still in the crook of his arm. He took one last look at Clarke before parting the curtain and stepping out to let her sleep. Augst had napped for ten minutes, before deciding that was boring, and was now wide awake.

 

“Hey, how about we take a walk, hm?” Bellamy muttered to the happy baby, bouncing him. “Let's go look at the sky, buddy. Do you know where your mom came from yet?” It was good to talk to babies, that’s what he’d found when Octavia was little. She was quiet as long as Bellamy kept talking. It was why he’d read her so many stories.

 

He was still smiling down at August when they stepped out into the sun.

 

“Look at that, huh.” Bellamy hoisted the baby to his shoulder, leant against his chest, facing outwards. From this angle both of them had a view of the camp, including the newly built cabins, and woods beyond, stretching out into the distance. Bellamy doubted August’s eyesight was good enough to see it all yet, but it wouldn't be long. “Isn’t this planet cool? You’re so lucky, you’ll never be trapped under a floor, or between four walls. You’ll always be free, August,” Bellamy whispered, August’s small pink ear brushing against his lips, “I promise you.”

 

“They’re cute,” Octavia’s voice came from beside him.

 

Bellamy let August slip down a bit, but kept him against his chest.

 

“That’s the craziest mop of hair I’ve ever seen on a baby,” Octavia smiled wide.

 

Before Bellamy could say anything, Octavia was in front of him, her hair braided back, fierce black war paint in place around her eyes, yet conversely cooing at the baby. It was a bit of a bit surreal image.

 

“Hey, I didn’t expect you for another week.”

 

“We’re headed to Polis in a few days. Had to come now.” Octavia was completely entranced by the baby, sticking her finger in his flailing little fist. “Oh, you’re so cute,” Octavia grinned at August. “It’s a boy, right? How old is he?”

 

“Just a month,” Bellamy said.

 

“Who’s is he?” Octavia finally asked, looking up at her brother.

 

Bellamy breathed out roughly, “Clarke’s.”

 

Octavia’s face fell. “Wait, Clarke’s back?”

 

“Rode through the gates two days ago with this guy in a sling and an arrow in her side,” Bellamy said tiredly, lightly kissing August’s hair absent-mindedly. “She’s in med bay, sleeping.”

 

“Huh.” Octavia looked disbelievingly between Bellamy and August. “Imagine that… Clarke’s a mom.”

 

“Yeah,” Bellamy said, frowning inwardly. That part still seemed strange. Clarke was still so young, she’d survived so much, and now she didn’t get to just live for herself, because she had a child to think about. She’d already kind of demonstrated she would die for August, so Bellamy doubted she regretted her choice. He’d never regretted Octavia. Never regretted protecting her, caring about her, no matter how difficult it was. He’d regretted a lot of the choices he'd made, but never that one.

 

“Got any input on that?” Octavia raised an eyebrow at him.

 

“What do you mean?” Bellamy tried to read her expression, but she just looked expectant, like she was waiting for an admission of some kind.

 

“Bell?” Octavia lowered her voice, “you’ve got to realise he looks just like you, right? So…?”

 

Bellamy’s eyes widened. “What? O… no. If you’re asking if he’s… if…” He stumbled over his words, “no, no, he’s not.”

 

Octavia didn’t look totally convinced. “I want to believe you, big brother.”

 

“Hey, Bellamy,” Raven marched over, followed by Monty, Jasper, and Harper, all with eyes only for the child in his arms. “Hey, August. How we doing, huh?” Raven slipped her hands under his armpits, fingertips supporting his head, and hauled him to her, kissing his cheek, before resting him against her chest.

 

“August?” Octavia said dryly. “His name is August?”

 

“Isn’t it cute?” Raven bounced the baby lovingly.

 

“Wasn’t that what you were going to call me if I was a boy?” Octavia folded her arms and regarded her brother.

 

“No.” Bellamy didn’t know what to do with his arms, feeling empty without August in them. He mirrored his sister and folded them defensively. “It was Augustus.”

 

“Really?” Jasper smirked. “That's a cazy coincidence.”

 

“Hey, let me hold him. You’ve had a go already.” Monty held out his arms and Raven conceded.

 

Harper immediately peered over Monty’s shoulder to get a good look, beaming down at August.

 

Jasper looked between the couple anxiously, “You two don’t get any ideas now, okay?”

 

Harper blushed as Monty groaned and rolled his eyes at his best friend.

 

“Is he the first skaikru baby born on the ground?” Octavia asked.

 

“No,” Jasper scoffed, quickly following with, “I think he was the first one _made_ on the ground though.”

 

“Jasper,” Bellamy all but growled, warning the boy.

 

Before anything could escalate, August distracted them all by bursting into tears and waving his tiny fists in distress.

 

Monty suddenly looked very uncomfortable as August struggled in his arms. “Uh... is he hungry?”

 

Raven shook her head. “Clarke just fed him. Did he pee?”

 

“I changed him just now,” Bellamy said.

 

“Then maybe he pooped,” Harper offered, leaning down to sniff his diaper. “Smells fine though.”

 

“He can’t be tired, he napped a bunch of the morning,” Bellamy frowned at the baby.

 

“Float me now,” Octavia burst out exasperatedly, rolling her eyes at the lot of them. She scooped August out of Monty’s arms and dumped him in Bellamy’s as quickly as the boys could react. Immediately August burrowed into Bellamy’s shirt and quieted.

 

Bellamy gaped down at August in awe.

 

“Guess he just wanted daddy,” Octavia said pointedly, before turning to stride away.

 

“I’m not lying to you,” Bellamy yelled after her.

 

“Catch you later, Bell,” was all she responded with.

 

Bellamy turned back to his friends with their open mouths and raised eyebrows. “He’s not… Clarke and I... you know what, you can _all_ go float yourselves.” He focused back on August and marched away from the group, teeth gritted.

 

* * *

 

 

“Can’t believe you got shifts off,” Raven complained as Bellamy passed her the wrench.

 

“You can look after August full time if you want,” Bellamy said argumentatively. Immediately, he regretted it. It made it sound like he didn’t want to be doing this, like he’d rather Clarke hadn’t handed August to him… which would be a bald-faced lie.

 

“No, I’m cool just being fun Aunt Raven, thanks. No dirty diapers.” She walked back to whatever she was tinkering with today; a small backup generator for med bay, if he remembered correctly.

 

“The perks without the responsibility.” Bellamy lay on his back on the padded, pillow strewn bench Raven had shoved up against the wall for when she couldn’t be bothered to crawl to her bunk late at night. Lying August chest to chest, he pillowed his own head with one hand, and rested the other on August’s back. The baby was starting to attempt to lift his own head by himself, nudging his chin into Bellamy’s collarbone, as his feet knocked a beat against Bellamy’s stomach.

 

“Exactly,” Raven replied, glancing back to see Bellamy brush a kiss to August’s fist where it rested by his chin. “Bellamy…” she began, putting the wrench down on her workbench, “it’s been a week now and we’ve never actually talked about ...August.”

 

Bellamy looked toward her as the baby’s name was said. “What about him?” For a horrible split second, he believed she was talking about the deformity.

 

“Don’t tell me you don’t hear what everyone’s saying,” Raven said. “You know why Abby’s been so pissy with you. Why she’s acting so cold to you now. Even she thinks it.”

 

“Thinks what?” Bellamy’s face gave nothing away.

 

“Oh, I could so easily punch you right now, Blake.” Raven stared him down unsuccessfully. “Thank your stars you’re holding that cute baby.”

 

Bellamy looked mildly offended.

 

“Bellamy. _Everyone_ thinks August is yours,” Raven stressed.

 

Bellamy kept his face straight. “Do you?”

 

“Well, I’m very aware I’m not the only girl you slept with our first few weeks on the ground. I'm a little surprised there aren't more little Blake's running around right now,” Raven said, laughing inwardly, brow furrowed a little. Bellamy was being deliberately difficult about this. “And you and Clarke were sparking off each other from day one.”

 

“Clarke and I were never like  _that_ though.”

 

“Oh, okay.” Raven scoffed, crossing her arms and  crouching a little as if to get on August’s level, the baby’s face pointed toward her so she could address him. “August, your _dad_ is a dirty liar.”

 

Bellamy sat up, keeping August close with one large hand. “Look, Raven, I don't what to say. I mean, it was just... we clashed, okay, and fought, always, and then suddenly she was the only who cared about... who bothered to..." Bellamy found he couldn't find the words to describe what he and Clarke had been, but there was one truth he could aknowledge, sighing, "Spacewalker was always there.”

 

Raven froze, nostrils flaring at the mention of Finn.

 

Bellamy’s eyes were downcast and distant. “There was a moment I thought, maybe. But that was the night she followed Finn out into the woods to meet those damn grounders.”

 

“The night she asked you to be back up. Yeah, I remember Finn and Clarke arguing after. Him being upset. He said she didn’t trust him… I think he was just annoyed that she trusted you more.” Raven paused briefly. “You saved her life that night, _and_ she was fighting with Finn, are you sure she wasn’t a little… grateful.”

 

“Raven!” Bellamy complained, ears burning. Truthfully, if Clarke had instigated something that day, he _probably_ wouldn’t have said no, he couldn't deny it. But she didn’t, and they hadn’t, and it was probably for the best in the end.

 

“Fine, he’s not a Blake,” Raven sighed, dumping herself on the metal stool by her smelting station. “He’s not Finn’s either though. Shit, but look at him, it’s like I’m seeing double right now. You sure you never just got really moonshined up and-”

 

“Raven, I could never be drunk enough to forget _that_.” Bellamy shot Raven a piercing dark look.

 

Raven tried not to smirk at how close that was to an admission of something. “Either way, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, and I’m pretty sure August too, you’re his dad now.”

 

‘ _Yeah_ ,’ Bellamy thought, ‘ _I don’t know how Clarke will feel about people thinking that.’_ All he knew is the thought made the back of his neck all the way up to his ears burn.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bellamy never sang, but what August wanted, August got, and this seemed to calm him. It was a tune Aurora had sung when Octavia was little to keep her distracted... quiet. Bellamy only remembered the chorus and he sang it off key, but August didn’t seem to mind at all.

 

Bellamy could hear Clarke arguing with her mom. He’d been asked to leave the med bay so they could speak. Clarke had been in bed two weeks now, and was getting severely stir crazy. No doubt that was what they were arguing about.

 

Bellamy stopped singing so he could try and listen in.

 

 _“Fine, but I want daily check ups,”_ Abby seemed to say.

 

Bellamy didn’t hear Clarke’s response to that. He looked back down at August, sighing, “Grandma’s a bit of a hardass, August, but it’s usually just cause she cares. Remember that.”

 

As if on cue, Abby burst out the med bay, tight-lipped. She gave him a cold look, saying nothing, striding straight past him.

 

Clarke stepped out a moment later, looking a little drawn.

 

“Well, look who’s on their feet,” Bellamy smiled at her.

 

She just sighed happily, and reached for August. “I thought my knees might give out. I was in that bed too long.”

 

“You needed the rest,” Bellamy said.

 

“Thanks for looking after him,” Clarke said sincerely, fiddling with August’s tiny fingers as she swayed, rocking him. “He trusts you.”

 

“Anytime you need a break or to work or whatever, let me know.” Bellamy _almost_ admitted that, honestly, he’d gotten very used to August’s weight against his chest… and he’d miss it. “Hey, Raven and Harper made you this.” Bellamy crouched down and pulled a folded length of cloth from the pack he had resting there.

 

Clarke took it in her free hand when he held it out to her, and it unravelled into a long thick strip of brown, hitting the floor. “What is it?”

 

“Hold August up by your chin and I’ll show you,” Bellamy encouraged. “You’re on pain meds, right?”

 

Clarke did as she was told. “My mom’s given me this numbing cream. You could punch me and I wouldn’t feel a thing right now.”

 

Bellamy smirked. “It’s a bunch of the thicker bandages from med bay, but Raven’s organised them so you can use them to hold August. Harper stitched them all together and dyed them brown, she said something about avoiding stains.” Bellamy looped the fabric over either shoulder and around Clarke’s waist before knotting it in on itself. “It’s stretchy so you can just…” Bellamy reached over a pulled out the fabric by Clarke’s left shoulder, “lower August in.”

 

Clarke slipped August into the gap, so he was just under her chin.

 

Bellamy then reached for the strap on the other side, pulling it over the support August’s head, resting sideways against Clarke’s collarbone. He went for the one around Clarke’s waist next, pulling it up to support August’s rump. “See.”

 

Clarke still had her hands against August’s head and bottom. “And this is better than the sling because...?”

 

Bellamy reached out and took both her hands in his, though she resisted at first. “Completely hands free. You can bend over, use both hands, and rush around, and he’ll be there, safe as can be, the whole damn time.”

 

Clarke kissed August’s forehead where it poked out just beneath her chin. She supposed this wasn’t so bad. “It’s great. Thank Raven and Harper for me.”

 

“Thank them yourself, Monty’s got a new batch of moonshine.”

 

“I can’t drink,” Clarke scoffed, a little bitterly. Sometimes breastfeeding was a bitch.

“No, but Raven, Harper, and I can.” Bellamy smiled smugly.

 

“Bastards,” Clarke murmured under her breath.

 

“You missed us, Princess.” Bellamy put a hand to her back, snagging his bag from the floor with the other, and steered her down the corridor.

 

“Yeah, probably,” she admitted. _‘Definitely’_.

 

* * *

 

 

August stayed mostly content for a couple of hours as Clarke enjoyed herself. Sitting around the bonfire, laughter frequent and genuine, it felt like she was back reliving one of the better nights at the dropship. She’d forgotten what it felt like, how good it was to be with her friends. Even Murphy seemed to have stumbled and settled into the group quite neatly in her absence, which she was still adjusting to seeing. He’d returned only a couple of months before Clarke, humbled, apologetic, and a lot more tolerable than before. He and Raven were still working on him making good though.

 

It was quarter to ten when August began to fuss.

 

Bellamy instinctively dragged August’s blanket from the bag he had with him.

 

“Does he need changing? I don’t mind covering it if you guys just want to chill out tonight,” Harper offered.

 

Clarke smiled meekly, undoing the wrap August was in, not that keen to explain.

 

“Thanks Harper, but this is the one thing only Clarke can do,” Bellamy explained in a roundabout way.

 

“How on earth do you know it’s that! You didn’t even sniff him or anything.” Jasper gestured generally to August, a little tipsy.

 

“He cries a little differently,” Clarke answered.

 

“Seriously?” Raven arched a brow.

 

“And he normally eats around ten.” Bellamy handed the burping blanket to Clarke. In turn, he took the wrap she offered him and folded it.

 

Tucking August into the crook of her elbow, she organised the blanket over her shoulder and rucked up her shirt. Looking up, she found half her friends staring, and the other half pointedly not looking. “It’s just a boob guys,” she sighed deeply, eyes rolling just a bit. There was no way they could actually see anything anyway.

 

Bellamy absentmindedly fiddled with August’s little onesie clad feet where they stuck out toward him, smiling gently.

 

Clarke watched Bellamy intently in that moment, teeth grinding almost visibly in worry. Bellamy was sure what she was thinking about. They still had to have a conversation about August’s… uh, overpopulation of little piggies, but right now wasn’t exactly the time.

 

“So, Clarke, we never finished discussing godparents,” Jasper began, breaking the silence, hands rubbing together to warm them, “I _am_ the obvious choice, right?”

 

Murphy snorted involuntarily. “Shouldn’t Bellamy get to choose? Doesn’t the dad choose the godfather?”

 

Jasper stared Murphy down. “And you think he wouldn’t choose me?”

 

“Monty is the obvious choice, Jasper,” Raven pointed out.

 

“Ouch!” Jasper gasped.

 

“Or Miller,” Raven added.

 

Bellamy didn’t know if Raven had done it deliberately for his sake, but she’d chosen the exact right moment to offend Jasper. Now everyone watched their verbal tennis match instead, while only Clarke stared in utter disbelief at Bellamy. His friends never spoken like this in front of him before, with their assumptions laid bare. He hadn't even been entirely sure what their assumptions were. How could he predict they would do it for the first time in front of Clarke?

 

He didn’t know where to look, or what to say, resting his forearms on his knees, hands folded, he watched the fire flicker.

 

The conversation continued in a likewise fashion for twenty minutes, as Bellamy and Clarke stayed largely quiet.

 

“Hey, I shouldn’t overdo it. August’s going to want to sleep in a minute, so I should too.” Clarke finally stood, clearing her throat.

 

Bellamy stood up too. “I’ll walk you. I have a shift in twenty anyway.” They needed to talk, and he’d rather not wait and let the awkwardness simmer.

 

They walked in silence for a minute before she said, “You told people August was yours.” It was just a statement of fact on the surface, but he could hear her silent ‘why?’

 

“Clarke,” Bellamy sighed tiredly, “I promise you I didn't know that they thought that."

"You didn't deny it though." Once again the tone was level, with a hidden question.

"Clarke... you turned up out the blue, after seven months, with a month old baby that for some reason, somehow, looks more like me than you. Ten months ago… it was just us on the ground so…” Bellamy struggled to find the words, “I guess people made assumptions. What do you want me to do? Yell that he’s not mine from the guard towers? Send out a memo?”

 

“My mom thinks he’s yours,” Clarke realised aloud. "I wondered... she's been treating you so-"

 

“Well, she’s been punishing me a little more the past week, but she already blamed me for letting you run off. I… I told them not go after you. That you didn’t want to be found yet.” Bellamy interjected, then swallowed roughly. He should have gone after her. She shouldn’t have had to go through it all alone. “I’m sorry, I know you probably don’t want people thinking that we were...”

 

“No, I want to ...thank you for it. It makes him safer,” Clarke said cryptically.

 

“Clarke.” He had to ask, just for his own peace of mind, even though he was already ninety-nine percent sure, “He’s not Finn’s, right?”

 

Clarke stopped in her tracks, rubbing August’s back as he fed. “He’s not mine,” she whispered.

 

“What?” Bellamy’s stomach turned.

 

Clarke stared into his eyes, keeping her voice quiet and desperate. “Please, Bellamy. You don’t understand. The grounders believe in purifying their bloodlines. I don’t know what they’d do if they knew I saved him… they’d say I interfered. They'd take him. I don’t know if... some of them might even want him dead.”

 

“Clarke, I don’t-”

 

She grabbed his hand and held it tight, checking over her shoulder. “Listen, okay. I’m his mother now, and I always will be, but he wasn’t always mine, Bellamy. I _found_ him.”

 

It all came into focus. Bellamy blinked once, and then two times rapidly, trying to process. The shock was evident on his face. “His feet. He was abandoned because he… but you… you’re feeding him right now, you can-”

 

“I know, it’s complicated.”

 

Clarke began to walk again, still hanging onto Bellamy’s fingers till they reached the Ark. They continued their discussion in whispers.

 

“So, there’s no… he doesn’t have a...” Bellamy didn’t know how he felt. Relieved? Maybe a little… or a lot. Placated? Yeah, maybe that too. He couldn’t be jealous of someone that didn’t exist. He couldn’t be worried they were going to waltz back into August’s life and claim the place Bellamy had earned the past couple of weeks.

 

“No,” Clarke confirmed.

 

“I’m in,” Bellamy realised.

 

“In what?” Clarke regarded him, puzzled.

 

“You said August would be safer if people asked less questions, if they thought he was mine… then he’s mine,” Bellamy decided, brown eyes boring into her. “Same way he’s yours.”

 

“I can’t ask you to-”

 

Bellamy cut her off, “I’m offering. Clarke…” his tone softened around her name, “I’m here.”

 

“I could say he’s Finn’s,” Clarke responded argumentatively.

 

Bellamy narrowed his eyes at her, heavy with something more than discomfort, jaw clenched, silently asking if she really believed that would work.

 

“I suppose he does look a little more like you,” Clarke joked, corner of her mouth quirking, maybe she'd registered the hurt look in his eyes at her half-hearted attempt to push him out of August's life. “You love him too, right?” She asked softly.

 

Bellamy couldn’t lie about this, and he didn’t want to. “Yeah, I do.”

 

“Okay,” Clarke conceded. “What now?”

 

Bellamy shrugged. "We just... don't deny it. Raven we might have to tell the truth to, but Octavia just thought I was lying to her when I said he wasn’t mine so we’ll probably be good there. Just as well, she gets more grounder by the day.” He sighed.

 

“You think she’d give him up?” Clarke’s expression grew a little fierce in that moment.

 

They reached the door of her mom’s room, where she and August were going to be staying for now. August had finished feeding, so she pulled at her shirt and took the blanket off herself.

 

“No,” Bellamy realised, he hadn't meant to imply that, “Octavia would never do that. August’s situation is… not unlike what hers was. It's never fun being born a crime,” Bellamy mused in a near whisper, reaching out to cup August's head, a thumb brushing over his curls.

 

“Clarke?” Her mom’s voice came from the other side of the door.

 

“I’ll come and get August when I finish my shift, okay?” Bellamy said as Clarke’s pensive face focused on the door.

 

It opened a second later to reveal Abby, fully dressed and obviously waiting for Clarke. “You’re pretty late,” Abby stated.

 

“Not really, it's only ten,” Clarke defended.

 

“My shift starts soon I should go.” Bellamy announced, keen to escape. He handed Clarke the bag with August’s things and leant down to press a soft kiss to the boy’s head. “See you in a few hours,” he promised.

 

* * *

 

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000) 

* * *

 


	3. My Son, My Responsibility

 

“Bellamy’s good with him,” Abby commented as soon as the door closed to Bellamy's turned back. She leant against the wall, arms folded.

 

“Yeah, he is,” was all Clarke offered in response. She lowered August into the cradle Bellamy had made for him out of two crates; one crate upturned and bolted under the other to raise it off the ground, a large pillow, and a whole bunch of grey ark issue blankets. It had been by her cot in med bay, but now sat by the side of the large bed centered in her mom’s room.

 

“I keep waiting, Clarke. I keep waiting for you to tell me what happened to you, and you just…” Abby’s tone was strained.

 

“I don’t know where to start, Mom,” Clarke admitted quietly, stroking a hand over August’s belly as he slumbered on his back, his bottom lip protruding slightly in an adorable pout.

 

Abby twisted her hands anxiously. “Did Bellamy know, when you left?”

 

“No.” Clarke took a finger and brushed August’s curls back from his head with it, still not meeting her mother’s eyes. “He didn't know anything.” Too vague to be a lie, but not quite the truth either.

 

“Why come back now? The thought of you being alone when he was born, Clarke, so many things could have gone wrong.” Abby sat on the edge of the bed, dark brown eyes glistening.

 

“I was scared when I left. I didn’t want to face everyone after what I did,” Clarke said quietly. “But then something else scared me more.”

 

“What?” Abby’s tone lowered to match Clarke’s.

 

“Someone hurting August. He’s safer here, or at least…” Clarke worked up to what she needed to say slowly. “Mom, I need you to look at something.”

 

Abby came to her side, and sharing a desperate look with her, Clarke began to unwrap one of August’s feet. Unwrapping the left one, Clarke cupped it and lifted it a little in her hand so Abby could inspect it.

 

Abby’s lips parted in shock as she took notice of the rogue sixth digit protruding at a strange angle from August’s foot. “Is the other foot the same?” Abby asked in that firm, all business Doctor’s tone.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Grounders believe in culling children like this, don’t they? To get rid of affected genes.” Abby said a little dangerously.

 

“Like the Ark never practiced eugenics,” Clarke scoffed.

 

“We never killed babies.” Abby shot Clarke a cold look, and swiftly moved on, “Clarke, I’m no geneticist, but I'm pretty sure in this case it couldn’t be hereditary.” Abby stroked the toes of August’s feet as she spoke. “You have a certain amount of radiation resistance, and no one on the Ark carried the gene for polydactyly, so chances are you didn’t give this to him. I suppose at some point early on you were exposed to a higher level of radiation than normal. Unless, of course, a grounder fathered him that is, but…” Abby looked at Clarke, wearing the severe look of something like determination, “Bellamy’s his father, isn’t he?”

 

Clarke swallowed roughly, tearing her gaze away from her mother’s. She watched August sleep, dark curls ruffled and full lips pouting as his chest rose and fell rhythmically. “Yes,” she said. There was no going back now. One day, she would tell her mom the truth, but Clarke couldn’t face it today. It wasn’t really a lie… as far as August would ever be concerned, Bellamy _was_ his father.

 

“I don’t think I’ve told you yet…” Abby steeled herself, “how well you did, Clarke. He’s,” she faltered, her tone now the gentle one reserved only for her daughter, and now also for her grandson, “August, he’s perfect.” Abby reached out and brushed the pad of her thumb over the soft skin of August’s forearm where it was resting above his head.  

 

* * *

 

 

It only took a couple of weeks before sharing a room with Abby started driving Clarke crazy, even though having someone to help with August at night was a blessing.

 

Clarke took to spending a lot of time out of doors. The weather was good, and she revelled in giving her son the childhood he never could have had on the Ark. He was at an age now where he would reach up and try to grab, though not very successfully, any colourful flowers she placed in front of his nose. One afternoon she was sat on the grass with her son resting on her thighs looking up at her. Clarke brought her face close and kissed August’s nose, smiling at him.

 

August squealed and opened his mouth, drawing the corners up in a lopsided kind of toothless grin, tongue peeking out.

 

Clarke gasped, heart pounding; August was smiling. She scooped him up and bolted for the front gate.

 

He was stood in his guard uniform in front of a bunch of cadets, hands on his hips, looking grumpy as ever.

 

“Bellamy!” She came barrelling toward him.

 

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Bellamy grasped Clarke’s shoulder to bolster her, looking both she and August over quickly, anxious one of them was hurt.

 

“Nothing, take him.” Clarke grinned up at Bellamy, pushing August into his arms, ignoring the group of cadets who were watching them quizzically.

 

Clarke’s grin caused Bellamy to relax and he looked down at August smiling.

 

“Kiss his nose. Trust me,” Clarke urged.

 

Bellamy continued to smile at the baby. “Hey, buddy.” He pressed a gentle kiss to August’s nose, smiling the whole time.

 

August reached up to touch Bellamy’s cheeks, cooing, giving him the same lopsided goofy grin he’d given Clarke a minute ago. “Is he…?” Bellamy murmured.

 

“That’s a smile, right?” Clarke asked excitedly.

 

“Yeah,” Bellamy confirmed, his tone one of wonder. He turned to Clarke and laughed, bouncing August.

 

Then August let out a gurgled chuckle, a baby version of the sound Bellamy had just made, followed by a squeal of delight, and both Clarke and Bellamy froze, two identical shining grins overtaking their faces as they stared down at August in wonder.

 

“Sergeant Blake, that doesn’t look like training,” Commander Miller called down good-naturedly from the guard tower to their right.

 

“August just laughed!” Bellamy yelled back by way of an explanation, a state of euphoria somewhat muddling his thoughts.

 

A spate of giggling sped through the recruits at this surreal interaction between their sergeant and commander.

 

“Congratulations, kid,” David Miller offered, “now get back to work.”

 

Bellamy placed August back into Clarke’s arms and without thinking about it gripped her shoulders and pressed a kiss high on her cheek. “See you both later,” he said a little breathlessly.

 

“Yeah,” she said quietly, face a little flushed.

 

Bellamy watched her walk away a moment. In a few hours he’d get to go see her and August again. Just a few hours. He ran a nervous hand through his hair, and turned back to the recruits.

 

* * *

 

Bellamy tapped his pen against the table, just about listening as Kane read out the council’s agenda. Bellamy was more of an honorary member, there only because in some strange way a fair portion of the population still regarded him as their leader… or one half of their leader anyway, the other half was- Bellamy checked the clock; Clarke would be taking August to visit Raven in her workshop right about now. They’d promised to meet him for lunch right after.

 

“Bellamy,” Kane said, “I was wondering if you’d take that responsibility.”

 

Bellamy’s head snapped back to chancellor and stared back at him, pen stilled, eyes a little wide. He had no idea what Kane had just asked of him.

 

The rest of the councillors just kept looking at him, waiting.

 

“I’m sorry, I got distracted a moment. What responsibility?”

 

Kane looked faintly amused. “Are we boring you, Sergeant?”

 

Bellamy opened his mouth to reply. “I was just thinking… about…” no one came to his rescue, “August,” he admitted. Colour rose in his cheeks. He’d been thinking about Clarke too, but that was somehow more difficult to acknowledge.

 

Commander Miller laughed lightly, clapping Bellamy on the shoulder from the seat beside him.

 

Abby was gazing at Bellamy across the table, her eyes somehow not as cold as before, but not exactly welcoming either.

 

“A census, Bellamy. We need a comprehensive list of all residents; where they live, how they’re related, what jobs they do, and we need it now,” Kane repeated.

 

Bellamy nodded, sitting a little straighter. “Yeah, of course. Should I list by residence?”

 

“Ideally. We want families listed together as much as possible. Otherwise, precede however you wish.”

 

Bellamy smiled politely, and waited for Kane to move on again before looking to the clock once more. Time was ticking so slowly these days. Twenty minutes till he saw them. It had been ten minutes since Kane started reading the agenda. He only had to survive two more periods of that, then he could see them. Bellamy sighed as quietly as he could, dragging his gaze from the clock.

 

* * *

 

Bellamy huffed, running a hand through his curls. Everyone had filled in their information to the best of their abilities, he knew that, but some people's information was confusing, or downright stupid. He really wanted to ask Murphy why he thought ‘Miller’s couch’ was an appropriate response to ‘place of residence’, even if it was technically true. Or why Jasper had listed his ‘personal beliefs’ as ‘indie with just a hint of disco’. Bellamy groaned and rubbed his tired eyes. He leant back in his chair, the census forms haphazardly strewn across the chancellor’s desk in front of him. Kane had offered his office for the task he’d given Bellamy, as if that made it so much easier or something.

 

On a couch pushed against the wall, through the dim light, he could see Clarke’s chest rising and falling gently. He had no doubt she was fast asleep. She’d brought a large basket, one of many that had been gifted to them by the Trikru as part of a recent trade treaty, and filled it with August’s bedding so she could keep him close. He’d begun to try and roll off things now, so Clarke didn’t like to keep him on her chest if she might fall asleep.

 

Bellamy dragged his gaze back to the task at hand, and pulled the census book toward him. He still had a lot of work to do, and he knew which residence was next.

 

‘ _Cabin 9’_ he wrote in the first column, _‘Bellamy Blake.’_ Bellamy raised the pen off the paper and chewed his lip. Just him, in a cabin he built as a distraction and used only for crashing in after long shifts. He wished it felt like home, he wished Octavia were there sometimes. ‘Families should be listed together’, that’s what Kane had said. Clarke and August would be listed with Abby, not him. It shouldn’t bother him as much as it did. He quickly wrote down the rest of his information and tried not to think about it anymore.

 

By the time Bellamy got to covering Bunk 7 August was beginning to fuss. He wasn’t crying outright, so much as whimpering and grumbling. Bellamy yawned and pulled himself out of the chair, aware that if he didn’t get to August quick he’d get louder and wake Clarke, and she seemed to be sleeping more soundly than she had in weeks.

 

“Oh, that’s a smell, buddy,” Bellamy murmured as he heaved August up. “Let’s get you clean.” After August was changed, Bellamy picked out fresh clothes as well, slipping August into a two-piece, made up of white pants and matching t-shirt. He was getting too big for most of the onesies they’d found initially. In the wreckages of the Ark stations there had been a lot of discarded clothes, most had been distributed already, but newborn clothes weren’t exactly in high demand.

 

August didn’t seem in a hurry to go back to sleep. Bellamy held him to his chest, muttering non-specific comments about anything and everything, and in return August would gurgle back like he understood. Bellamy eventually returned to the desk chair, holding August in his lap.

 

“Hey, don’t drool on the book, August,” Bellamy said and turned the boy sideways so he could curl up into Bellamy’s chest. August promptly occupied himself with slobbering all over his own fist instead.

 

Bellamy continued the work, humming to August. After a while the baby fell back to sleep. Bellamy kept him in his lap though, scared to wake him by putting him down. Eventually, Bellamy reached Bunk 23, and etched down ‘Abby Griffin’ in neat script. He quickly found he knew all of Clarke’s information without needing to check her form, and August’s.

 

A short while later August woke with a problem Bellamy couldn’t fix, and began to whimper. This time, as if it were clockwork, Clarke shifted and stretched her spine out, groaning.

 

“Morning?” Bellamy joked.

 

“I wish,” Clarke answered tiredly. She half rolled off the couch, half stood up, making her way over, she reached out and squeezed Bellamy’s shoulder, keeping her hand there.

 

“How’s it going?”

 

“Slowly,” Bellamy admitted.

 

Clarke smiled sleepily, running her gaze over the page open in front of her. She frowned. Gently taking the pen from his grasp, she brought it to the page. On the entry for _‘August Griffin’_ she added to the end, in her own slightly larger, sloping hand _‘Blake’._

 

“Clarke, you don’t need to-” Bellamy started,feeling guilty, like he was somehow asking for more than he deserved.

 

“Same way he’s mine, he’s yours. That’s what we agreed,” Clarke reminded him.

Bellamy moistened his lips, trying to find the words to describe his thoughts. He was grateful, truly, as much as he was scared, he couldn’t be more so.

 

“Together.” Clarke let her hand fall from his shoulder. In such dim light her eyes weren’t obviously blue, but they held the same solemn intensity they always had despite the absence of the colour.

 

“Yeah. Together,” Bellamy agreed.

 

“Get some sleep, Bellamy.” She leant down and took August from him. Next she reached for Bellamy’s hand, fingers brushing, then intertwining briefly, she forced him to stand. Too soon, Bellamy thought, too soon she pulled her warm hand from his. Gently shoving him in the direction of the couch, she took the desk chair and began to feed August, head lolling in exhaustion.

 

He knew there was nothing he could do for her, and so he didn’t argue, collapsing into the couch she’d left so beautifully warm.

 

Next thing he knew he was waking up post dawn, not exactly well-rested, but manageably tired. He shifted, bleary eyed, he found himself underneath one of the blankets from August’s bed. Yawning, Bellamy pushed the blanket from his body and clambered up, joints cracking. August’s basket was gone, signaling Clarke had left, probably sometime soon after Bellamy fell asleep.

 

Drifting over to the census book that was now closed on the desk, Bellamy groaned, remembering he still had at least fifty names left. After a beat he furrowed his brow. Where had all the forms gone? With slow realisation, Bellamy flipped open the book, leafing through to where he’d left off. Written in that familiar slightly larger, more sloping script, was the rest of the census. Why did she have to be so aggressively considerate? She was already up half the night with August, and now she was trying to do his job as well.

 

Bellamy flipped back through the census, revelling in its completion a little despite himself. Pausing, he dragged his index finger down the page to stop below Clarke’s name. Corner of his mouth curling upward, he found it; ‘ _August Griffin Blake_ ’.

 

Bellamy went in search of a fresh set of clothes, throwing them on in his eagerness to go find some food. He made his way to the mess tent as soon as his boots were fixed back on his feet. There were plans for a communal cabin, a mess hall of sorts, but they hadn’t exactly acquired the manpower or resources for it yet. It was only early days, that’s what Kane always said.

 

Clarke was eating with Raven and Harper when he swooped in and snatched August up, making the boy squeal in delight.

 

“Look who’s up,” Bellamy announced, grinning, and then pressed a wet kiss to one of August’s chubby cheeks. August’s little legs kicking wildly in response.

 

“Careful, I just fed him, he’ll throw it all back up,” Clarke warned.

 

Sitting beside Clarke, Bellamy found a bowl of oats already waiting for him. He handed back August, sharing a smile with Clarke, who merely arched an eyebrow at him. “Thanks... and thanks for last night.”

 

Raven snorted, earning a glare from Bellamy.

 

“Bellamy?” Clarke said, still smiling knowingly at him.

 

“Hm?” He answered, spooning oats into his mouth.

 

Clarke reached out and tugged at the bottom of his shirt briefly, nails skimming the taut skin near his hip.

 

He clenched his jaw.

 

“You have your shirt on inside out.”

 

Bellamy looked down to discover that this was in fact true. Finding the three girls staring in amusement, he just sighed, and tugged the shirt back up over his head. Whilst Raven seemed woefully unperturbed, Harper was suddenly smiling into her food, as if elsewhere, and Clarke… Clarke was watching him with her teeth clamped tightly down on her bottom lip. Bellamy didn’t know what to do with that image, his chest tightening and cheeks heating in response. It was only for a split second, and then gone, she refocused herself on August as Bellamy finished rearranging the shirt and pulled it back on the right way.

 

Bellamy occupied himself back with his breakfast. There was something a little unfair about the fact Clarke and he were the only parents on the planet who’d gotten to the raising the kid part without having the making the kid part first. He gripped his spoon a little harder. Everytime Bellamy thought like this it ended in a firm warning to himself, reminding himself Clarke had never showed any interest in that way. She cared about him, he knew that, and they had August now, but that was it. August, that was what mattered in the end. Genetics or no, Bellamy wouldn’t change August for anything, and neither would Clarke, and that was why this worked. Bellamy couldn’t regret the series of events that had led them here. Neither would he dare complicate things with Clarke, not when that could negatively affect August. The lip bite, the possible flirting on Unity Day, letting people think that they had slept together, that was all just flukes and necessary evils. It didn’t mean anything, and even if it did, nothing could happen.

 

* * *

 

 

A couple of days after August’s two month injections they came. Five riders, only one of them recognisable, with braided dark hair, and tattoos trailing up her left arm.

 

“Octavia,” Bellamy immediately abandoned his post and ran to envelope his sister in a hug as she dismounted her horse, briefly lifting her off her feet.

 

She squeezed him tight. “It’s good to see you.”

 

“You too,” Bellamy said, pulling back, but keeping his hands on her shoulders, “how was Polis?”

 

“We can talk politics later.” Octavia waved the question away.

 

The siblings exchanged another smile and began to walk together toward the Ark, where the rest of her party were already headed.

 

“Who are these guys?” Bellamy gestured to the others ahead of them.

 

“The commander’s night riders. They deliver her messages, and enforce her laws.” Octavia said it robotically, like she was repeating word for word what someone else had told her.

 

“What message are they here to deliver today?” Bellamy said carefully, stopping in his tracks, something in Octavia’s tone unnerving him.

 

For a moment she said nothing, her smile only faltering. “Join or die,” Octavia answered darkly.

 

“Bellamy,” Clarke approached him, August in the wrap at her front, Raven and Murphy at her back. “What’s going on?”

 

“We need to find Kane,” was all Bellamy managed, still thoroughly confused by Octavia’s statement.

 

“I’ll warn him,” Murphy uttered, watching out the corner of his eye as the party of four grounders entered the Ark.

 

As if sensing distress, August broke out into cries, wriggling against the fabric that held him. Clarke looked down at him, teeth gritted. Bellamy knew she didn’t like grounders around August, not with his past.

 

“Hey,” Bellamy said softly, stroking over her upper arms, forcing her to look him in the eye, “How about we give August to Raven and go find your mom?”

 

Clarke nodded. If the chancellor was meeting with these grounders, that meant Abby probably was too. The whole council might be needed, and with what Clarke was to the grounders… they might want her present too. It was better August was kept away from that.

 

* * *

 

 

“After all this time, why now?” Kane’s jaw was clenched in anger as he regarded the grounders in turn. “We have the peace treaty now, trade deals in place, isn’t that enough?”

 

“Our Heda has her reasons. She asks for nothing but your loyalty and co-operation.” A bearded man named Garon was doing most of the speaking.

 

“You mean our subservience,” Abby said coldly.

 

“Look, just because Lexa wants this doesn’t mean it’s bad for us, Mom.” Clarke tried to keep an open mind. She could see where Lexa was coming from; free trade with all the clans, free movement, the protection of the commander, all in exchange for Skaikru’s loyalty and knowledge. It wasn’t a bad deal.

 

“Clarke, she abandoned you at Mount Weather,” Bellamy reminded her with a sharp whisper.

 

“I know,” Clarke replied a little too harshly. Breathing out slowly, she continued, “I know that, I’m not saying I trust her, Bellamy, I just… I think we need more information.”

 

“The Heda wishes for you to accompany us back to Polis,” Garon said stiffly.

 

Clarke assumed they were addressing Kane, and so she didn’t remove her gaze from Bellamy until she felt a dozen sets of eyes settle on her face. Garon had eyes only for her as he spoke.

 

“Wanheda is who Heda recognises as the ambassador of Skaikru. She will only speak with her,” Garon specified.

 

* * *

 

“I can’t go. August’s too young. He can’t stay here without me, and I’m sure as hell not taking him to Polis.” Clarke paced the chancellor’s office anxiously, August in her arms.

 

“We don’t have a choice,” Abby said reluctantly.

 

“Your mother’s right, Clarke,” Kane concurred from his seat behind the desk, the same chair Bellamy had been sat in last night. “Lexa isn’t asking this time, she’s commanding.”

 

“Skaikru can’t afford another war, not with the coalition. They would crush you.” Octavia stood back toward the door, brow furrowed and arms crossed.

 

“Bellamy?” Clarke looked for an ally, blue eyes wide and desperate.

 

“We need peace for August too,” Bellamy responded, his hands clasped in front of him where he sat on the couch. He looked a little defeated, just like she did. “If you defy Lexa in this, August is in danger anyway. If she takes offense, if we end up fighting them, we will lose. You think they’ll spare Wanheda’s son?”

 

Clarke just kept staring at Bellamy, eyes pleading, fingers buried in August’s curls as she held him close.

 

“You won’t be alone,” Bellamy promised. “You know I’ll protect him, Clarke.”

 

“I know…” Clarke said, a little hoarse, “but I wish you didn’t need to.”

 

“Clarke,” Abby began, “we need to talk. Alone.”

 

“Bellamy stays too,” Clarke insisted.

 

Abby nodded. If this was about August, then she supposed Bellamy deserved to be there.

 

“We reconvene with the riders at nightfall with an answer,” Kane gripped the arms of the desk chair and hauled himself up, “I’ll see you all then.”

 

On his way out Kane gave Bellamy a commiserating pat on the shoulder.

 

“Octavia?” Kane had to gesture for her to exit before she moved, looking worriedly between Clarke and Bellamy as she did so.

 

Abby closed the door behind the pair. “I can bring up August’s surgery. I have a the plan already drawn up. I had thought to do it next week anyway, and I know it’ll be a relief if you don’t have to worry about hiding it anymore,” she said quickly, wasting no time.

 

Clarke and Bellamy shared an anxious look at the thought of August going under the scalpel so soon.

 

“How long will his recovery be?” Bellamy asked.

 

“I can’t be sure, but it’s not a complex surgery, and young babies are very adaptable, so if the wound is kept clean and dry, I’d say a maximum of about two weeks. If I perform the surgery tomorrow and you leave in the next few days, he should be fine by the time you get to Polis.”

 

Bellamy rose slowly and made his way to Clarke’s side.

 

Knowing what he needed, she silently surrendered August to him.

 

Bellamy gazed down, holding August in the crook of his arm. The boy seemed so content, cooing as Bellamy’s face came into view, close enough to recognise.

 

“I’ll give you an ointment to help the scar fade. In a month or two nobody will ever know about this, not even August if you don’t want him to,” Abby said, watching Bellamy carefully.

 

The muscles in Bellamy’s jaw twitched as he ground his molars. “I just... don’t want him to be afraid,” he admitted darkly, taking one tiny hand, and stroking a thumb over its soft back, August’s fingers automatically wrapping tightly around his thumb.

 

“I promise, he won’t feel it,” Abby’s tone softened.

 

Bellamy’s hand dropped to his side when August released his thumb, brushing knuckles with Clarke. Finding something like courage, he took two fingers and curled them into Clarke’s palm.

 

She responded, sliding her fingers against his to slip in between them.

 

Catching her eye, needing her say so, he waited until she nodded at him.

 

“Tomorrow it is then,” Bellamy sighed, looking to Abby where she waited for their decision.

 

Refocusing on August, his other hand still holding Clarke’s, he watched her reach up with her free one and stroke August’s cheek. His eyes fluttered closed contentedly at the sensation, turning his face into Bellamy’s chest, his miniature, wide, button nose scrunched up thoughtfully. Bellamy wondered what occupied his mind; maybe he wondered where he would be when he woke up, who would hold him next, when his next meal was coming. Bellamy hoped he would never have worries much greater than that.

 

* * *

 

Bellamy’s leg was jittering hard. He chewed his bottom lip, staring into nothing. He registered Clarke pacing in front of him with hands tucked in her armpits. She’d been sat on the floor of the med bay with him until five minutes ago. Five minutes ago when the operation was supposed to have finished. Abby had told them to go and distract themselves, that Jackson would come get them when it was over, but they hadn’t gone anywhere.

 

Jackson was now the fourth person to know about August’s deformity, due to the fact Abby had needed him for the operation. After today, no one else would ever need know. Clarke and Bellamy still had to decide when and if to tell August one day.

 

It had been only an hour, but it felt like so much longer, minutes and seconds becoming thick and viscous, filling the space around them like jelly. Clarke hit the wall beside him and slid down. Her hand landed on his knee, calming the jittering that could only be making her more anxious.

 

Bellamy looked to Clarke, finding only her profile as she focused on the opposite wall, her expression tense but otherwise unreadable.

 

“Tell me about when you found him,” Bellamy tried. They needed a distraction, and it was the one thing he’d always wanted to ask about.

 

Clarke looked to him, blinking, eyes shining with all the anxiety and worry she was feeling. She trusted her mother, and there was nothing really dangerous about this procedure, but she worried anyway.

 

“He was so small, Bellamy, and so… so beautiful,” Clarke began. “I don’t think I really even thought about what happened next. He needed me, and I just couldn’t walk the other way, especially not after everything that had happened.”

 

Bellamy watched her blue eyes intently as they welled with tears. He soaked up every word, refusing to let himself look away.

 

“I think I needed him too. I think I needed someone to show me that I could be something more than…” Clarke swallowed roughly,  breaking from his gaze, “...more than Wanheda. When I’m holding him, and he looks up at me. I mean, when he really looks at me, into my eyes, he doesn’t know any of that. There’s no pain or guilt. He looks at me like he loves me.”

 

Bellamy lifted his arm and placed it around her shoulders, drawing her into a sideways embrace. He was glad she had found that in August, but maybe she hadn’t needed to go so far to find it. Maybe Bellamy could have offered her that, or, at least, he could have tried. He could have forgiven her for it all, the way she’d forgiven him so long ago when he’d been so alone, and afraid, and all he’d wanted to do was run. She’d said she needed him then, he wondered if that was still true, because as it turned out, he really needed her.

 

“I was so...” Bellamy struggled with his words, eventually forcing them out, “...angry. So angry, for so long. Angry that you left me. Angry at myself for not going after you. I…” Bellamy sniffed hard, a tear trailing down his cheek. He’d been keeping it under wraps several months, and yet he still didn’t quite know what to say. “Then you were back and it was so easy, especially because of August, to overlook all that.”

 

“I never meant to hurt you,” Clarke was turned into his shoulder, voice muffled by his shirt.

 

“I know that,” Bellamy’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “I’m so done with being angry, Clarke. And with being afraid. I don’t want to be afraid anymore. But now August is here and I’m beginning to realise, no matter what, if nothing else, I’m always going to be scared for him.”

 

“Do you regret it?” Clarke asked tentatively, and he could see the wall building. He could see her beginning to shut him out. Was she seriously asking, after everything, if he regretted August?

 

“Of course not,” Bellamy almost scoffed.

 

She drew away slightly so she could better read his features, still unsure.

 

“My son, my responsibility,” Bellamy joked with himself, looking up toward the heavens. He wondered where Octavia was right now; the child he’d loved first; the sister he’d raised. It wasn’t in any way duty, or some ingrained sense of brotherly responsibility, that had made him shoot the chancellor to get on that dropship. He’d done all of that because he loved Octavia. “Constant terror,” Bellamy laughed quietly and shortly, “that’s the price we pay for love. Isn’t it, Princess?” Looking down at her he found his face dangerously close to hers.

 

Clarke breathed out shakily. “That’s the first time you’ve called August your son.”

 

Bellamy noticed a few bits of her hair were caught in her eyelashes, and reached over to gently rid her of them so he could better see her eyes, tucking them behind her ear. “I suppose, I’ve done it a thousand times in my head, I just didn’t-”

 

“Clarke? Bellamy?” Jackson popped his head round the door to their left.

 

They scrambled to untangle themselves and stand up, a little embarrassed, but distracted enough by the thought of news of August that the emotion dissipated almost immediately.

 

Jackson was smiling, and that could only be good. “He’s a bit groggy, but you can see him now.”

 

Clarke let out a huge sigh of relief, and Bellamy let her lead the way, following her as she all but barged past Jackson.

 

They heard him grizzling before they reached him. He was in Abby’s arms, wearing only a diaper and the fresh dressings on his feet.

 

“Hey, little one,” Clarke said softly, taking August from Abby, “someone’s grumpy, huh?”

 

Bellamy reached the pair, looking down into August’s face as the boy screwed his features up, turning pink, and whimpered some more. “He’s not in any pain, right?” Bellamy asked Abby.

 

“No, but I suspect the aesthetic might be making him feel a little nauseous. He’ll be fine in a few hours. Don’t feed him until he calms down, and see if you can get him to take a nap.”

 

Bellamy nodded tersely, taking mental bullet points.

 

“Look, August,” Clarke slowly passed him to Bellamy, smiling despite her current anxiousness at seeing August so upset, “It’s your dad.”

 

“I got you,” Bellamy promised him, bringing his gaze back up to meet Clarke’s and holding it there. They made some sort of silent agreement. There was no half-hearting this, no hiding from it, they were in some way, somehow, a family now. Bellamy wasn’t going anywhere, and hopefully Clarke could see that.

 

* * *

 

August was sleeping when they reached Polis. Slumbering silently in the wrap that kept him to Clarke’s chest, not much more than his dark hair visible. She rode the white horse she’d returned to Arkadia on with her head held high. Bellamy kept a little back, watching her carefully out the corner of his eye. Octavia had braided Clarke’s hair and marked across her upper face in the grounder style with dark blue warpaint. She’d convinced Clarke that playing into the grounder perception of Wanheda could only help Skaikru, no matter how much Clarke hated it. Well… Clarke hadn’t actually admitted that she hated it, at least not to Bellamy, but she’d seemed uncomfortable with the prospect when Octavia had originally brought it up. The only thing she’d refused to compromise on was August, he stayed strapped to her front the whole time, regardless of whether or not Octavia worried it would ruin the image. Bellamy didn’t agree though, in his opinion, it only made her look more fierce... almost mythical; a warrior princess cloaked in blue on a white horse with longsword strapped to the saddle and a tiny baby held to her front.

 

Bellamy remembered his stories. The story of the nereid Thetis in particular. She had been the adoptive mother of Hephaestus, the baby god who was tossed from the heavens for being deformed. Bellamy remembered that story well. It had been a favourite and he’d read it to Octavia many times. Thetis had also been a political figure; with the power to make and topple kings, she’d helped secure Zeus’ reign. And she was the mother of Achilles too… the boy hero who had no weakness but for one spot on his foot. How ironic all that was, Bellamy thought.

 

Clarke was just as impressive, a legend in her own right. For all the grounders knew, Clarke had taken the mountain, whilst pregnant, then disappeared for half a year, given birth alone, and returned to Skaikru just approaching two months ago. Now she personally led Skaikru into this coalition, not even yet nineteen years of age. More than that, they knew Clarke had their Heda’s respect and was under the her protection. Wanheda was completely untouchable. Hopefully that meant August was too, but if the story of Achilles had taught Bellamy anything, it was not to get complacent. He wasn’t leaving them unguarded for a second until this whole thing was over with.

 

Even with Kane being the chancellor, it was Clarke that rode in front, flanked by Bellamy and Octavia, followed by the rover, containing Raven, Kane, and several members of the guard to act as personal security, with Miller leading them. It had been made pretty clear even though he was a member of the guard Bellamy was there to protect Clarke and August specifically. Miller hadn’t made any attempt to give Bellamy orders during their journey, despite technically being his superior now as a freshly promoted lieutenant. The commander’s night riders followed a distance behind, as they had the whole journey. The small procession garnered no small amount of attention as they winded their way through Polis toward the tower at its center. They drew a significant crowd as they slowed. Bellamy tensed seeing the grounders point and stare at Clarke.

 

Clarke found it difficult to dismount with August in front of her. She could still do it, but she had to do it backwards, and it wasn’t easy. Dismounting quickly himself, Bellamy jogged over and offered his help. She swung one leg over Selene’s neck and clutched his shoulders as he caught her around the waist and lowered her safely to the ground.

 

“How are we feeling?” Bellamy muttered.

 

Clarke, her hands resting on his upper arms, gave him a withering look, as if to ask how he thought she was feeling. He knew already neither of them wanted to be here.

 

“Clarke!” Lexa’s voice travelled as she strode purposefully toward them, her personal guard staying a respectful distance away, ever watchful. She wasn’t exactly smiling as she approached, but she looked fairly pleased with herself.

 

Clarke’s hands fell away from Bellamy’s arms, and, lips tightly pursed, he realised his were still resting on her waist. Somewhat reluctantly, he removed them.

 

Lexa’s tone lowered and leveled as she met with them. “I hope the _nature_ of my invitation didn’t send the wrong message. I will explain why it had to be so when we are alone,” she addressed Clarke only. Bellamy was sure it wasn’t deliberate, or any type of rudeness, it’s simply that to Lexa, Bellamy must seem inconsequential, and all but faded into the background. August didn’t though. Lexa’s gaze dropped from Clarke’s face almost immediately to regard the small sleeping one by her chin. August was at his most adorable, curls mussed, dark lashes fanning his golden cheeks, pink bottom lip protruding slightly. Even the commander of the twelve clans couldn’t overlook that.

 

Lexa’s gaze softened almost imperceptibly, though she also seemed somewhat taken aback… unsettled. She would have heard the rumours, the reports, but perhaps she hadn’t quite believed it till now. “Your son. He is healthy?”

 

“Yes,” Clarke said, unsure what to make of Lexa’s interest. Perhaps she felt a little touched by it, a little worried, a little confused too.

 

“His name?” Lexa inquired.

 

“August.”

 

“Kom graun, yu na groun op, August,” Lexa reached for her temple with her thumb and wiped roughly removing some of her own warpaint, she reached out to August, pressing her thumb between his eyebrows firmly but gently, careful not to wake him, leaving a small grey mark.

 

“What does that mean?” Bellamy asked.

 

“From the earth, you will grow,” Clarke translated for him.

 

“Unlike us,” Bellamy commented, sharing a small nervous smile with Clarke. August would always be Skaikru, but he wasn’t ‘ _Skaigyon_ ’. He hadn’t be born among the stars.

 

“It is a common blessing. He has my protection,” Lexa answered, finally regarding Bellamy properly, the dent on her brow deepening as she did so. Her gaze flicked from Bellamy, to August, and back again thoughtfully.

 

Clarke cleared her throat. “Lexa, you remember Bellamy Blake.”

 

“You were the Skaikru spy in the mountain?” Lexa’s tone carried a thread of soft realisation as she analysed him

 

Bellamy nodded slowly. Why was that important?

 

Lexa caught Clarke’s gaze, and they shared something silently, the corner of Lexa’s mouth twitching almost teasingly, though her gaze stayed as level and intense as always. Conversely, Clarke’s expression grew only more stony, emoting a silent warning to Lexa.

 

Octavia approached the group now, a hand resting on her weapon. Her now almost permanent determined expression set on her face.

 

“I’m afraid he doesn’t much take after Clarke,” Lexa offered, inspecting August once again, “he has more of you in him.” She looked to Bellamy, somehow appearing to be both curious and unimpressed.

 

Octavia drew in a sharp breath between her teeth as she came to a halt at Clarke’s side, her features softening. Bellamy registered that this was the first time someone else had acknowledged the resemblance in front of her. She hadn’t been around Arkadia for the great debate over whether August was going to have Clarke or Bellamy’s nose, the general consensus being that he would have Bellamy’s. Everything seemed to be Bellamy’s, which in truth was incredibly lucky more than anything, considering the truth about August. Part of Bellamy wished Clarke had something though. Part of him wished that August had blue eyes, or a sharper nose. Maybe when August was older part of him would appear to take after her, but for now he just looked like a tiny, compact Bellamy, which they should be glad for. At the very least it sold their story quite well.

 

“I think maybe he got my mouth though, right?” Octavia said, perhaps more to lift some of the tension currently hanging in the air than because she actually believed it.

 

Miller came up behind her, guard uniform on, his black beanie fixed over his short hair, resting his gun over his shoulder in a relaxed fashion. “Nah, with that pout? That’s still all Bellamy.” He laughed lightly to himself.

 

Bellamy merely huffed out a short laugh in response, just taking it. Better people laughed about how August looked like him, than started commenting on how he didn’t look like either of them.

 

“We should go inside,” Lexa decided, apparently suddenly tiring of the conversation. She turned on her heel, expecting them to follow, and they did.

 

 

* * *

 

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000) 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout out to the best beta in the world. alina, thanks for catching me in my more british moments - every time i use the word gourd i'll think of you <3


	4. The One Assumption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We had some pining Bellamy - now have some hardcore pining Clarke!

August had woken early and refused to settle back down. Clarke had tried everything, even striping him down to his diaper, bar the socks that covered his dressings, aware it was quite a warm morning. Pulling on a borrowed white robe over her similarly borrowed white shift, she briefly grumbled to herself about the grounders taking all her clothes for washing. It was meant to be a gesture of goodwill, but it was also a bit of an inconvenience. She called the garments she wore now white, but they were more of a slightly grubby shade of cream. Clarke preferred it. Anything in that clinical white shade reminded her of the mountain now, and no matter what, the colours of the ground would always be preferable to that. She remembered how amazing it had been to first see a river, a flower, a mountain range. How happy she’d felt sitting in the sun with August, letting him inspect a daisy she’d held up to his face with the same amount of wonder she’d once felt for such small things. Space stations and underground bunkers had nothing on that.

 

August been crying more lately. Clarke had spoken to Abby about it before they’d left for Polis and she’d promised he was at the age where this might just be a phase he was going through. It still made Clarke feel terrible when she couldn’t do anything for him. If nothing else worked walking around outside, gently bouncing him, was what she’d taken to doing. More often than not it seemed to work.

 

After a while August’s crying got louder, and an otherwise motionless lump on a couch by the window stirred, groaning. After a second of panic Clarke noted the familiar face buried in amongst the pillows of the couch that was way too small for him to be sleeping on, a blanket covering him up to his chin.

 

Clarke just rolled her eyes. They’d agreed he’d be in the next room along, and that would be sufficient to him keeping them safe. Apparently Bellamy had changed his mind at some point in the early hours of this morning. Maybe he hadn’t been able to sleep very well here, Clarke knew she’d struggled. She decided to let him sleep. He probably needed it.

 

Finding that the grounders also seemed to have taken her boots for cleaning too, she huffed, and scooped August up. Wrapping him in a yellow blanket, she ventured out barefoot.

 

She didn’t give much thought to her appearance; draped in this strange off-white colour, hair messy blonde waves now approaching an unmanageable length after barely being cut for several months, baby in arms. Octavia probably wouldn't approve. Clarke wasn’t exactly Wanheda material right now.

 

The concrete halls echoed somewhat as she moved through them. This early in the morning Polis was a ghost town, which was good. She'd rather move unseen for now.

 

Clarke stopped by a set of doors that opened inward to present a wrought iron barrier, forming something akin to a balcony though it didn’t jut out very much. As August began to calm down, Clarke continued to rub his back to soothe him, looking out as the sun rose over Polis. At the moment only a few people roamed around on the ground, but Clarke could imagine it at midday; bustling, bright, colourful, full of old people and children. Lexa had been right all those months back; Polis did change Clarke’s perception of the grounders.

 

August rested an open hand against her collarbone, and tucked his head under her chin, nuzzling a little. Bringing her own hand up she stroked his cheek, running her thumb over the silky skin of his ears. He was so perfect, she mused, backs of her fingers trailing their way down the feathery hair at the nape of his neck all the way down to his lower back. Capturing the wrist of the pudgey hand that was held at her collarbone she lifted it to her mouth and brushed a kiss to the knuckles, and then another. Letting go of his hand, she closed her eyes and breathed him in. She couldn’t bear for him to grow up. Every day he got a little stronger, a little bigger. He was still only small, not even three months yet, but it had already seemed to go so quickly. He was beginning to really look like someone. Clarke could already see the little boy he was going to be soon enough taking shape in front of her.

 

“Clarke?” Bellamy’s voice found her.

 

She turned, sun behind her, giving her a halo of sorts as its orange rays caught in her hair. The sun was almost all the way up now.

 

“Hey,” Clarke frowned, trying to make sense of him being here.

 

He was wearing only what he’d slept in. A pair of tie-waist grey linen pants she’d never seen before sat on his hips. She ignored his bare chest as best she could, keeping her gaze raised above his shoulders. His hair was ruffled, eyes unfocused, telling her he hadn’t been awake long. “I woke up and um… you weren’t there.”

 

“Sorry,” she said, smiling a little awkwardly, “August wouldn’t settle.” Clarke surrendered August to Bellamy when he walked over, but kept the blanket, aware August was probably overheating more than anything.

 

“Rough morning, Buddy?” Bellamy asked his son softly. “What’s wrong then?”

 

Seeming to recognise Bellamy, August was suddenly wide awake. He babbled and kicked his feet as Bellamy grinned at him and brought him into his chest. August could hold his own head up really well now, and didn’t need to be held in more than one arm once Bellamy had him comfortable. As small as August still was, he looked even more so when held by Bellamy, which helped Clarke feel a little bit better about how fast time seemed to be moving.

 

She reached out to run a hand over August’s velvet back. The base of Clarke’s hand brushed over Bellamy’s wrist where he held August up. She felt him look at her, but she kept her focus on August.

 

He had a little oval-shaped birthmark on his shoulder that had once been a dark brown, but had now faded. Other than that his back was unblemished. Clarke wondered if he would have freckles speckling his shoulders when he was older, like Bellamy did. Held bare chest to bare chest, Clarke could see how incredibly similar their colouring was. August was only a few shades lighter than Bellamy, and Clarke knew he’d probably grow darker over time. Bellamy leant down to brush a kiss against August’s crown, their curls met and Clarke lost track of whose were whose.

“Do we tell him? When he’s older.”

 

Clarke almost startled as Bellamy’s question broke the heavy silence. And then for a while she pondered it; what truth did he mean? That they weren’t his birth parents? That he had been born with a deformity? Both? “We’ve got over a decade to figure that out.”

 

Bellamy nodded. It wasn’t a conversation they needed to have right now.

 

In trying to find something else to talk about, Clarke noticed the once stubble that was beginning to form a beard on Bellamy’s jaw. He’d given up shaving during their journey to Polis, and the consequences made themselves known.

 

Clarke gestured to her own chin. “Is this the plan now?”

 

Bellamy stroked his bristled chin with the hand that wasn’t holding August up. “Maybe.”

 

“Hm…” was all Clarke chose to respond with, smirking slightly.

 

“August likes it. Don’t you, buddy?” Bellamy grinned, grasping August under his arms and hiking him up so he could rub his hairy chin against August’s bare belly.

 

August wriggled to get away, squealing and giggling.

 

“Bellamy, come on, that must be rough,” Clarke said.

 

Bellamy dropped August into the crook of his arm. “Clarke, it’s fine. It’s gotten pretty soft now that it’s longer.” He reached for Clarke, taking her wrist. He tugged her hand up to his face, so she could feel it.

 

Clarke brushed her fingers over what was the admittedly passably soft, short beard. Realising his warm hand was still cupping hers, she met his gaze questioningly.

 

His brown eyes were unwavering, searching her blue ones for something. Clarke couldn’t say what he was looking for, but the fact he was looking at all scared her. His warm breath ghosted over her face, and she found herself wondering how he’d suddenly got so close.

 

Her lips parted as she watched his dark eyes, such a familiar shade, trying to figure out how it was possible August looked so like him. It was somehow completely cruel and wonderful at the same time; that her child didn’t look like her, but he _did_ look like Bellamy. Sometimes when she watched Bellamy from a distance, she could imagine years from now, when August was a young man, what he would look like, and who he would be. Or, at least, Clarke could see what she hoped he’d be. She was glad it was Bellamy that she’d told the truth to, glad that it was Bellamy everyone had assumed to be August’s father, because no one else could have done this with her, she realised that now. She’d also realised that this, Bellamy and her, it could only get more complicated from here.

 

“Clarke,” a third party interrupted.

 

Clarke let her hand fall.

 

“I was just coming to wake you,” Lexa stated. She looked between Clarke and Bellamy, stood in their states of undress, with Bellamy still holding August to his bare chest, and decided to stay back.

 

Flanking Lexa were a couple of the members of her guard, already suited and booted with various knives and swords strapped to their person.

 

“You can talk. I’ll take August back to the room, see if he’ll sleep some more,” Bellamy offered, taking August’s blanket from Clarke’s hand.

 

“Thanks,” Clarke said sincerely, not quite meeting Bellamy’s eyes. Turning her attention to August she cupped his head and pressed a kiss to his round cheek. “See you soon,” she whispered.

 

Lexa and Bellamy shared a look as he left. In truth, she only saw Lexa’s reaction to Bellamy, and it was somewhat indecipherable. There was an element of disbelief, maybe a coolness, perhaps a little bitterness.

 

Lexa approached as Bellamy disappeared around the corner with August. “Leave us,” she told her guards, and they did exactly that.

 

“We didn’t get a chance to speak alone yesterday,” Lexa said.

 

“Sorry, I meant to come find you after the talks,  but August…” Clarke trailed off. August came first, and he’d needed her.

 

“I understand.” Lexa walked up to the wrought iron barrier and leant on it in a way Clarke hadn’t dared for fear it would give way and she’d plummet to her death. It didn’t look to be the most stable. “Clarke… The boy you killed last year…”

 

Clarke flinced, not expecting the sudden switch to talk of Finn.

 

“...you loved him?”

 

“You know I did,” Clarke answered solemnly.

 

She _had_ loved Finn. It was that perfect, untouchable, first love. A love that belonged in a pretty, but short lived fairy tale, not in real life. She could see that now. Now that she knew a different kind of love; a ‘take a bullet for them’ love; a ‘walk the earth for them’ love; a ‘take a life for them’ love. Clarke knew, despite everything, despite all it had cost her, she would even pull that lever on Mount Weather all over again to keep August safe. She hadn’t loved Finn like that.

 

“You loved him. Yet you sacrificed him for the greater good. You could have killed me with that knife. It would have started a war but Finn would have had a chance.” Lexa paused thoughtfully. “But then, this man, Bellamy... you let hundereds of innocent people burn and die. For a while I believed that was so we could win, that I convinced you, but not anymore; you did it so that the mountain wouldn’t know they had a spy in their midst. You did it for him.”

 

“So did you! We needed him. And you let those people burn too,” Clarke pointed out. It… it wasn’t the same. There had been no way out for Finn. She couldn’t have saved him, except to spare him the torturous death promised to him. Bellamy, he she could protect, that was all. And they'd needed him. That was why. Sure, she'd told Octavia she'd done it to protect Bellamy, and in part, maybe... Clarke couldn't think straight. 

 

“I _only_ did it to win the war,” Lexa returned evenly.

 

“But you didn’t win it, did you? I risked Bellamy’s life sending him into that mountain, and then you walked away. I remember what happened.” Clarke bit her lip to stop herself ranting. Her breathing was a bit faster, blood running warmer.

 

“I saved my people, that’s winning.”

 

“You could have got him killed!” Clarke said sharply, voice shaky despite her attempted to appear as unaffected as Lexa seemed to be. “ _How_ you win matters too, Lexa.”

 

Lexa was, at least on the the surface, completely unperturbed by Clarke’s anger. “Did you know then? Did you not wish to put him in further danger for the sake of your child? Did you really mean ‘We need him’, or did you mean that you did?”

 

They were definitely getting a bit too personal now, Clarke thought. She wondered if what Lexa was really asking was if Clarke had known about August when they’d kissed.

 

“I didn’t know about August then,” Clarke decided to say, happy that at least it wasn’t a lie.

 

“Is he your chosen?” Lexa asked.

 

Clarke had spent enough time with the grounders to understand what a chosen was, and no, Bellamy wasn’t her chosen.

 

“Why do you care?” Clarke sighed. Pushed to the edge now, all the resentment over Lexa leaving her at the mountain had bubbled to the surface.

 

“You should get dressed. We can speak later.” Lexa nodded curtly to Clarke, and made a swift exit before she could call after her, striding off the way she came.

 

Clarke respected Lexa a lot, more than she did any other leader she’d known if she was honest. More than Jaha, Kane, or even her mother, but that didn’t mean she was infallible. Clarke knew Lexa was under a lot of pressure, but in this particular situation she was being uncharacteristically irrational.

 

* * *

 

Clarke was cursing to herself as she left the second round of talks later that day. Striding down the corridor away from Lexa’s war room, Kane followed her.

 

“She’s not going to change her mind,” Clarke informed Kane harshly, turning round to face him.

 

“She could still-” Kane began.

 

“She won’t,” Clarke interrupted, the frustration building. “Lexa isn’t opposed to compromise but she has a point here, and I think you know that. Azgeda used to border with Trikru, but now we sit on most of that border. Our presence has halved the amount of coalition territory that needs to crossed to reach Polis. Azegda only get more dangerous, and Polis can’t properly protect itself with that kind of weakness. ”

 

Kane looked grim, like he hadn’t slept the night before. This conversation only served to make him look more tired and drawn.

 

“We don’t have the manpower to protect ourselves from the Ice Nation, they’ll walk right through, and if they do, even if we don’t fight them, it can only hurt us. Lexa can protect us from that.” Clarke was close to tearing her own hair out. Two talks in and they were still at square one with Skaikru’s chancellor so reluctant to see the truth of the situation.

 

“They don’t see us as being like them, Clarke. If we agree to this deal, we choose someone to rule us who will never put us first.”

 

“Lexa will respect the pledge,” Clarke said sharply.

 

“But will she respect us?” Kane asked with an even defiance, watching her intently.

 

“You need to be okay with the fact she respects me,” Clarke bit back. “And the grounders respect Wanheda,” she followed up bitterly. “That’s enough now. We have medical and technological knowledge they need. Over time, we can use that to build something. Make them see we’re worth respecting.”

 

“You really think this is for the best?” Kane sat on the edge of a concrete window ledge, apparently feeling defeated. “We join the coalition, and we paint a target on our backs. We become Azgeda’s enemy.”

 

“We’re already sat in the middle of their war. It’s arriving slow, but before we know it, it’ll be here. We need to choose a side to protect us, because we’re going to get caught in the crossfire anyway.” Clarke sat down beside Kane.

 

“So, we become the thirteenth clan?” Kane phrased it like a question, but it was full of acceptance more than anything.

 

“Yes,” Clarke said with finality.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t think Lexa was expecting that. That you’d be able to change his mind, especially not so quickly,” Octavia told her later as they walked back to Skaikru’s apartments.

 

“Kane’s stubborn but he’s not stupid,” Clarke reasoned.

 

“Kind of like my brother,” Octavia scoffed.

 

Clarke smiled. “Bellamy leads with his heart. Always. It’s not wrong, it’s just… frustrating sometimes.”

 

They walked in silence a moment.

 

“Clarke, we…” Octavia steeled herself, “I kept meaning to come talk to you, but I couldn't figure out what I wanted to say. I guess because I don’t really know, or understand, what went on between you and my brother.”

 

“Nothing went on,” Clarke interjected.

 

“Are you really _still_ trying to deny August is Bellamy’s?” Octavia laughed somewhat nervously.

 

Clarke bit her lip. She hated lying to people she cared about, and she did care about Octavia. It felt wrong that Octavia didn’t know the truth, even if Clarke and Bellamy had already agreed to keep it only to themselves. Raven was a complication, since Bellamy had blurted the truth out to her in the early days, but she was also generally a discreet person. Octavia was not so discreet.

 

“I never denied that,” Clarke answered truthfully.

 

“I did wonder since…” Octavia furrowed her brow, looking ahead as they walked. “Bellamy seemed so broken after you left it was almost like you’d died. He refused to let them go after you because he said it wasn’t what you wanted, that they wouldn’t find you, but then he’d get so guilty over it and try to leave to find you himself. I hated you for that. As much as I hated you for the missile at TonDC, I hated you more for leaving him.”

 

Clarke didn’t know what to say to that. She knew she’d hurt Bellamy by leaving, she’d realised that by now, but she’d never realised that it had been so badly.

 

“Night you left I found him sat on the ground outside with a pack all ready to go, just staring at the gates,” Octavia recounted gently. “He only did it a few times, and he never actually followed through, obviously, but I worried about how it would end since...” there was a pause, and when Octavia spoke again her voice was low and serious, “we thought you were dead, Clarke.”

 

Clarke clenched her jaw tightly, heart aching. She’d thought maybe they had, but no one had ever actually told her that before.

 

“Everyone did. When Lincoln was given his pardon, Lexa had him travel as a night rider for a while. He would bring us these reports from southern villages, ‘Wanheda sightings’. Then when we got word you were being hunted, we sent out search parties to try to get to you first. They never found you. Lincoln stopped having anything to report; you'd disappeared. Your mom grieved, Clarke, we all did. But Bellamy, I don’t think he ever left the denial stage. He refused to believe it. He said he just knew you were alive.”

 

Clarke watched her feet, tears welling slightly. She sniffed, wishing them away, blinking hard.

 

“I made a point to visit often, just to check he was holding up okay. Then one day I rock up and he’s standing there, the old him, smiling out in the sunshine with this tiny baby in his arms.” Octavia’s lips quirked at the memory. “I was so pleased to see him so happy I didn’t even think about why he was, and then I heard you were back, alive, that the baby was yours and… you’ve got to see how that looks, Clarke.” She turned to Clarke, eyes wide, waiting for some sort of response.

 

“I know how it looks, Octavia,”Clarke said simply. “I’m not denying who August is.”

 

“Clarke… I don’t mean August." Octavia rolled her eyes. “I mean that what it looks like is you ran off and broke my brother’s stupid heart. Crazy part is, I think he’s still-.”

 

“He’s _not_ ,” Clarke responded, interjecting, half-way between laughing and outraged. She could tell where Octavia was headed, and just the idea was completely absurd. Clarke was so very thankful they’d finally reached the door to her bedroom.

 

“Hey.” Bellamy pulled the door open and popped his head round it, causing both girls to startle. “Thought I heard voices.” He looked between Octavia and Clarke.

 

“Hey, Bell,” Octavia managed.

 

Bellamy smiled at her, and then his gaze fell on Clarke, who was standing with shoulders hunched, arms crossed, chewing her lip furiously. “Talks go badly?” He asked, placing hands on either of her shoulders.

 

“Hm…” Clarke didn’t really respond, busy pondering Octavia’s monologue.

 

“Hey, Princess,” Bellamy lowered his head to try and get her attention, bringing a finger to her chin to softly raise her gaze to meet his.

 

Clarke opened her mouth to try and find a reply as those same brown eyes that had silenced her at sunrise made her lose her train of thought once again. She let her gaze fall to his lips. Her speech faltered completely.

 

“Oh yeah, that’s convincing,” Octavia said dryly.

 

“I’m okay,” Clarke managed, trying to reassure him, shying away from his touch. Octavia’s scrutiny was making it even more awkward.

 

“Okay, see you both later,” Octavia turned on her heel, muttering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like _‘morons’_.

 

“Come on.” Bellamy placed a hand on Clarke’s back and guided her inside their room.

 

* * *

 

Bellamy always took over for half an hour before August’s last bedtime feed. Back at Arkadia, he’d taken to sitting outside alone with August, under the summer moon, telling him a story before bringing him back to Clarke so she could feed him and tuck him in. The nights were warm enough, and the unpolluted sky glittered in a way that enhanced Bellamy’s stories about their namesakes; Orion, and Cassiopeia, and Perseus, and, one Clarke knew to his personal favourite, though she didn’t know why, Perseus’s wife, Andromeda. Bellamy never left Clarke’s room until August was sleeping, so Abby had taken to spending her evenings elsewhere, though neither of them had encouraged her to do so. Bellamy often joked it was because she didn’t like him, and Clarke didn’t think that was entirely untrue, but she also knew there was something else going on there her mother wasn’t telling her.

 

Abby had insisted on replacing Clarke’s birth control implant before she’d left, so Clarke had a fair idea of what Abby _thought_ was going on. Clarke had insisted it wasn’t necessary. This was completely true, in part because there was really little to no chance of her having sex in Polis, but also because her current implant had never actually failed. The whole thing was a waste of resources. Nevertheless, Abby had basically dragged Clarke down to the med bay to do the replacement.

 

Abby’s overreaction had been noticed, and was brought up over dinner that evening.

 

“Guess she’s just worried you’re going to knock me up again,” Clarke had sighed over her food as she said it, somehow not quite registering quite how many of their friends were present and paying attention.

 

Bellamy had spluttered into his soup, laughing despite the blush climbing his neck.

 

Clarke’s eyes had widened when she realised what she’d accidentally, maybe, kind of implied was _currently_ going on between her and Bellamy.

 

After a beat Jasper had snorted, initiating a series of jeering and laughing from their friends that went on for a solid minute.

 

Clarke loved her mom and her friends but it was good to be away for a while. She had space to breathe now. Another clear positive being that, in Polis, Clarke got to witness the stories Bellamy told, though he told them softly, for August’s ears only. Watching from across the room, Clarke caught only murmurs. Bellamy was speaking of witches and fate and gods. Sat against the backdrop of a setting sun, on wide window ledge, Bellamy gently rocked a content August in his arms.

 

“You can’t do that the whole time we’re here,” Clarke said to Bellamy as she took August from him.

 

“I’m fine, Clarke,” Bellamy lied, contorting himself to fit on the couch that was about a foot too small, he pulled a blanket over himself indignantly, scrunching his eyes tightly closed.

 

Clarke sighed, realising the only solution. If he refused to go to his own room, and leave her and August to fend for themselves, he needed a place to sleep, and the couch wasn’t suitable. “Bellamy get in the bed.”

 

“What?” His eyes shot open, and he lifted himself up on one arm.

 

“Seriously. It’s a big bed. Just get in. I feel bad.” Clarke clambered into her side, the side with the crib, and situated herself to start feeding August.

 

Bellamy was still for a while, but eventually the thought of another night in that horrible cramped position changed his mind. Pattering barefoot across the room lit now only by moonlight, he slipped under the furs on the other side of the bed.

 

Clarke had not known when she suggested the arrangement that Bellamy Blake was a cuddler. So, whilst waking up beside him was one thing, as it wasn’t the first time they’d slept in close quarters, it was something completely different to wake up to his whole body pressed against her back and his hand resting on her bare stomach. Then there was the fact Bellamy didn’t seem to sleep in a t-shirt, ever. Terrified he would wake up, she shifted away from him, sliding out of bed as quietly as possible.

 

“Morning, beautiful boy,” Clarke whispered as she leant over the cot next to the bed. August was the perfect distraction. Busying herself with his morning feed, she grabbed a blanket and settled back on the bed next to Bellamy to do it, leaning her head back against the frame tiredly.

 

It wasn’t much more than ten minutes before Bellamy groaned softly, and stretched, eyes fluttering open. He slowly clocked her feeding August next to him and smiled at them both sleepily. The expression quickly faltered, as if coming to a realisation about where he was. “What time is it?” He said, voice hoarse.

 

“Early. I’d get some more sleep while you can,” Clarke advised, giving him an easy out. Plus, he’d given her that opportunity last night. He’d changed August’s diaper and got him to go back down only a couple of hours ago.

 

Bellamy hummed his reply, and quickly rolled over, pulling the bed covers further up himself, muscles in his back and shoulders rippling.

 

For a moment Clarke desperately wanted to reach out and trace the freckles on his shoulders, to join them up like the constellations he knew so well. Rolling her eyes at herself, she shook her head, and focused back on August. She told herself it wasn’t that she had feelings for Bellamy, it’s just that she was in a bit of a drought at the moment.

After August finished feeding, he didn’t want to seem to sleep again, and so Clarke stayed up with him, talking to him in a gentle tone so as to not wake Bellamy. The sun was fully risen by the time someone knocked on the door.

 

“Come in,” Clarke called out before she could think about it.

 

“Rise and shine,” Raven said brightly. Spotting Clarke sat on the bed with August in her lap first, Raven then let her gaze fall on the other side of the bed, where Bellamy still slept curled up on his side. Her eyebrows rose slowly as she brought her eyes back to meet Clarke’s.

 

“Don’t,” was all Clarke said. She didn’t want to talk about it. She had no idea what she and Bellamy were doing right now. All she knew was they were just trying to keep August safe, to do good by him, so as far as she was concerned she didn’t need any judgement, or advice, or really any comments at all on the fact Bellamy Blake was lying half-naked in her bed this morning.

 

“You two are a mess, Clarke,” Raven said. “Bellamy swore blind to me you two were only ever friends and August wasn’t his and yet…”

 

“It’s complicated,” Clarke offered, clambering off the bed with August still in her arms, “but Bellamy is August’s dad.”

 

“I’m thinking my moonshine theory was spot on,” Raven said.

 

“Your what?”

 

“Doesn’t matter.” Raven preoccupied herself with booping August’s nose, causing the baby to coo happily, and slap his hands together in front of his face, trying to capture her finger.

 

Clarke understood this couldn’t make any sense to Raven, but it would. “I promise, one day, I’ll tell you the whole story.”

 

“You better,” Raven warned. She wordlessly took August from Clarke, nuzzling his cheek and giving him a kiss, grinning widely. “Whatever it is, August came out of it, and that’s pretty cool.”

 

“Yeah,” Clarke sighed contentedly, “it is, isn’t it?”

 

* * *

 

Finding out it was going to take a month for everyone to be gathered for Skaikru’s induction to the coalition shouldn’t have been a shock, but it was. Lexa had insisted on doing this the right way, which was also, as it happens, the long way. Of course, first ambassadors had to be located, half of them more than a week’s ride away. Then they had to prepare, and ride back. Clarke really couldn’t wait to introduce the grounders to radios. If they had enough of them it could halve the time they were spending travelling. Staying in Polis a month seemed a chore, but a weeks travel with a small child, again, wasn’t a good idea, and she’d only get a couple of weeks at home before she had to come back again. On top of logistical issues, there was also the political, considering it might also be seen as a slight toward the commander if Clarke refused her hospitality. So, Clarke had to stay, which meant August did too, which meant Bellamy wasn’t going anywhere either.

 

“Is there going to be an actual contract, or is this more of a spit on your palm kind of deal?” Raven asked, carding fingers through August’s curls where he rested his head on her shoulder.

 

“A bit of both.” Kane was stood with his arms folded, frowning thoughtfully. “Lexa said there’ll be some sort of ceremony, a binding, in which a contract will presented and signed by all the ambassadors.”

 

Left without any kind of council room, Skaikru, plus Lincoln, who was sort of an honorary member at this point as far as Clarke could figure, gathered in Kane’s quarters.

 

“Are the Ice Nation sending a representative?” Miller’s hand was absentmindedly resting on his handgun where it was strapped to his hip, as if he were on edge.

 

“I believe so.” Kane nodded.

 

Lincoln stepped forward to worriedly offer his own insight, “At the moment the Azgeda uprising is just whispers. They’re still members of the coalition, to not invite them would be considered an insult. It could start the war prematurely.”

 

“They won’t like this. Can they just... refuse to sign?” Clarke twisted her hands in her lap. She considered going to take August off Raven just so she could occupy her hands, but he looked happy enough, so she decided not to disturb him.

 

“Only by making a motion to Lexa first and getting at least three other ambassadors behind them.” Lincoln looked worried, not sure how unlikely the possibility was.

 

“The rest of the clans seem loyal to Lexa. Or, at least, they understand why she’s made this decision. They don’t want Azgeda superiority, even if they don’t think much of us, they’ll see the logic in Lexa’s decision,” Bellamy organised his thoughts out loud, reassuring himself as much as the others.

 

“Bellamy’s right. The queen of Azgeda has a reputation, and she is not revered by the clans as Lexa is.” Octavia nodded, sending her brother a small smile.

 

Bellamy wasn’t watching Octavia though, his hands were trained on where Clarke was twisting her own fingers almost painfully. He moved to sit to the left of her on Kane’s bed, placing a hand on top of hers where they lay restlessly in her lap, stilling them.

 

Without even thinking, Clarke slipped the fingers of her right hand inbetween his, thankful for something to hold onto. Then she sucked in a tiny breath, realising that might not be what Bellamy wanted. Glancing at his profile, she tried to read him, but he didn’t visibly react. Was this weird? No, they’d held hands before, right? Yeah… she was sure she’d been holding his hand after she’d told him the truth about August, and when they’d decided on August’s surgery. But it was different. August had always been there, between them, like some kind of emotional buffer. They always had August, or were talking about August. What were they when it was just them?

 

Bellamy soon fixed that problem. “No Azgeda are to have contact with August. They may already know about him, we can’t help that, but they won’t see him. Okay?” Bellamy looked between those who were present, a outwardly cool expression on his face. Clarke could see his facade beginning to crack though, revealing the deep concern underneath.

 

The grounder’s interest in Clarke was dangerous for August. His existence seemed so far to both intrigue and unsettle the grounders; the commander of death, and she’d created a life... allegedly. What would that life hold? Who would that child be? Maybe they would be a warrior, a leader, a weapon, like her. What they didn’t see, Clarke mused, is that August so far had proven he wasn’t much like her at all; August was all Bellamy. And Bellamy wasn't a warrior, or a leader, not really. Sure, he was great at those things, but when you really got down to it... Bellamy was a storyteller.

 

Clarke understood why Bellamy worried. She felt it too. The longer they stayed in Polis, the more she felt this sense of dread, like they were all on borrowed time, and now they were stuck here a month.

 

“Isn’t that why I’m here? To babysit?” Raven smiled, raising her gaze to regard Bellamy and Clarke before bringing it back to August again, bouncing the baby in her arms. “The only one apart from you guys that he doesn’t scream at. It’s not like I thought I was brought along for my political expertise.”

 

Bellamy laughed lightly as Clarke smiled at the floor. It wasn’t untrue, but it wasn’t the whole reason Clarke had asked if she’d join them. It was also true that Clarke had figured she’d feel a bit alone in Polis without Raven, even though she’d have Bellamy. Well… not ‘alone’, but she’d wanted someone to distract her from reality for a while, to help her switch off, Raven was good at that. Bellamy was Clarke’s friend, probably her best friend, but he wasn’t a distraction. Bellamy was just… distracting. She was always too busy trying to read the nature of the way he was acting toward her. The way he’d been treating her since she’d come back, since August, was just a tad more tentative than it had been before. It was strange because for the first time they’d had an actual conversation about how they felt, discussed Clarke leaving and all that, but still he felt distant; didn’t really make fun of her anymore; didn’t argue back as much. It was like he was holding back, scared of something. She thought maybe… she’d been holding back too. Even when Bellamy was sitting right next to her, sleeping beside her, she found herself missing him. She hated it, but she didn’t understand it, or know how to fix it.

 

“Thanks, Raven,” Bellamy said sincerely. Rising, he released Clarke’s hand, and moved over to Raven. As soon as he was close enough for August to recognise, Bellamy found two tiny hands reaching eagerly for him.

 

“I’m okay, but I still don’t beat daddy do I?” Raven didn’t seem disappointed, revelling in her position as third favourite, as she relinquished August.

 

“I guarantee when I sit next to Clarke, he’ll want her instead,” Bellamy sighed, pretending to be resigned but failing, cracking a smile. He came back to sit beside Clarke.

 

No more than a beat and August was grasping for Clarke, wriggling against Bellamy, whimpering softly. “Just can’t beat mommy can I?” Bellamy said softly, looking pointedly at Raven as he passed August to Clarke.

 

Clarke tried not to look too smug. Stroking the soft curls on her son’s head, she could almost forget the feeling of Bellamy’s warm hand in hers. Almost. But there she was… missing him again; missing the man who was sat right beside her.

 

* * *

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000) 

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	5. The End of Andromeda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait it was over a week i know i'm a liar but on the bright side i make sure all my chapters are on the thick side of 5000 words!

Clarke had always been the first one up. Bellamy always woke up to her feeding August on the bed, or sitting by the window with him, maybe drawing, or reading.

 

It was a couple of weeks into them co-sleeping before Bellamy finally woke first. August had a cold, and Clarke had been up most of the night with him. Bellamy hadn’t got much sleep either, but it had still been more than Clarke, who’d refused to put August down at all. Bellamy had dealt with a coldly Octavia enough times to be sympathetic but ultimately feel pretty unconcerned by it. In Clarke’s case however, especially since August had never really been ill before,  she worried that little bit more.

 

Looking back on it all Bellamy would always note that it never felt wrong, not even for a second. The hair in his face was long and blonde and soft. One of his hands was against her bare ribs, pulling her close, whilst the other was tucked under the pillows their heads rested on. The unconscious desire to pull her even closer almost overcame him before his eyes were fully open. Bellamy stifled a sharp intake of breath, realising how close and intertwined they were. Adjusting his head, unthinkingly, he groaned loudly as his neck cracked.

 

Clarke moved. Sighing, she curled into him a little more.

 

Bellamy tensed. She was settled right in his lap.

 

Clarke tensed too. Suddenly she was awake, pulling away to sharply sit, turning quickly to look down at him.

 

It was too late to pretend to be asleep.

 

“Morning,” she said, regarding him quizzically.

 

“Morning,” he replied, voice gravelly and cracking with sleep.

 

“What time is it?”

 

“Not sure, sun’s up though.”

 

They just kept looking at each other. Bellamy was waiting for her move. What would she do now? Whatever it was he’d follow her lead.

 

“Okay,” Clarke tugged at the hem of her shirt, as if very conscious of the fact his hand had been quite far under it not moments ago.

 

“You should get some more sleep before August wakes up again,” Bellamy told her, rising up on one elbow.

 

“Yeah,” Clarke said, but didn’t move.

 

The following silence was actually painful.

 

“Come on, Clarke. Who cares? So the Princess likes to cuddle,” Bellamy smirked, “I won’t tell anyone.”

 

“Me?” Clarke said with loud incredulity. She pointed to herself, eyebrows raised. “This is all you, Bellamy. You’ve been doing it the whole time.”

 

“Oh,” Bellamy scoffed. “Okay. I think I would have noticed by now.”

 

“I’m always up first! Have you ever shared a bed with anyone but me?” Clarke’s arms were folded defensively.

 

Bellamy thought deeply for a moment. He’d had his own bunk his whole childhood; Octavia had always shared with their mom. His adult experiences with bed-sharing usually didn’t end with him spending the night, except at the dropship a few times, but cuddling was kind of mandatory in that situation anyway. Damn… maybe Clarke was the only person he’d shared a bed with on a regular basis.

 

“Not exactly.”

 

Clarke stared at him pointedly.

 

“Hey, wait, ‘the whole time’?” Bellamy laughed. “I’ve been doing this for weeks and you haven’t said anything.” He moved to sit in front of her with his legs folded under him.

 

Clarke looked a little cornered. “Seemed a sort of awkward topic to just bring up…”

 

“Clarke.” Bellamy couldn’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed, her current expression was too priceless. “You sure that’s it, and not just that the princess kind of likes to snuggle?”

 

“Don’t be an ass, Bellamy,” Clarke warned.

 

He didn’t take her advice. Grabbing her by the knees he pulled her down the bed, earning a yelp.

 

Now lying closer to the middle, she pushed against his bare chest as he leant, grinning, over her, a half-hearted scowl on her face. “Damn it, Bellamy.” She shoved him again, not very hard. He knew her well enough now to tell she wasn’t really annoyed at all.

 

Catching her wrists he held to either side of her so she couldn’t shove him anymore. “You should have just said something. We could have built a pillow wall,” he suggested jokingly. It seemed recent but natural, this level of intimacy. They’d been sharing a bed a few weeks now, having her this close wasn’t really anything new.

 

Clarke just rolled her eyes, smiling despite herself. After a moment of struggling against his hands, she had the terrible idea of kicking out his knees from under him, sending him sprawling.

 

He landed directly on top of her, resting on his hands, with her knees either side of his midriff and his eyes trained on hers. Bellamy was only slightly ashamed to admit to himself that in that moment a part of him immediately felt a rush of excitement. Clarke might be his best friend, but he’d never really denied finding her attractive on top of that, well, not to himself anyway. He’d denied it plenty to other people. So, yeah, Clarke was attractive; it was a fact of life, and mostly it was something Bellamy managed not think about, locking down his thoughts in any moment whereupon he found himself admiring her. But now they were lying in a bed together in a very compromising position and she was pressed all warm and soft up against him... It was only natural, right?

 

His mouth growing dry, he tried to tell his body to lift off of her before this got any more awkward, but looking up into her eyes he was suddenly frozen in place. She didn’t move either, except to blink, staring right back at him with a stunned expression on her face. When her gaze fell to his parted lips Bellamy shivered; an inch, maybe two, and he’d know something he’d wanted to know for so long; just a couple of inches, a second of recklessness, and then he’d know.

 

“Come on, sleeping beauties, you’re missing breakfast.” Octavia’s timing was either the worst or the best in the world, depending on one’s perspective. He should be glad. In some way she was saving him before he could make a terrible, irreversible mistake.

 

In the split second after she barged in, door squeaking, it was like time, having been frozen, suddenly jump-started, the rest of the world reappearing.

 

Clarke scrambled to get away from Bellamy just as fast as he did to get away from her. Both their backs hitting the bed frame side by side to face Octavia.

 

Octavia’s eyes widened in shock.

 

“We weren’t doing anything.” Bellamy cringed at how guilty he sounded.

 

Octavia nodded disbelievingly. “Do you think you finish up ‘not doing anything’ and get ready for breakfast? Kane is waiting.” With that she made a swift exit.

 

Bellamy only caught up with Octavia once he finally made it to breakfast, choosing the seat beside her. He ignored the food in front of him, twisting to face his sister as she scooped up the last of her eggs and chewed fiercely, avoiding his gaze. “Hey, I want to, uh… Clarke and I-”

 

“Chill out, Bell. It’s my fault. I should have knocked. It’s okay.”

 

“No, Clarke and I weren’t doing anything, we were just-”

 

Octavia cut him off again, “It’s none of my business. I really don’t need to know _any_ details.”

 

“Clarke and I _aren’t_ sleeping together, Octavia,” Bellamy hissed.

 

“Jeez, why are you so uptight?” Octavia frowned as she analysed him, looking him up and down. “Is this denial routine just because I’m your little sister? You know I saw you with girls at the dropship, right? You and Clarke share a bed, that’s fine, I mean... you have a kid together, I’m not stupid; it’s not like anyone believes August was the product of immaculate conception, Bellamy.” She rose sharply from her seat, not bothering to say where she was headed.

 

 _'He might as well have been,’_ Bellamy thought to himself, sighing.

 

* * *

 

 

The first ambassador had arrived. A quiet, lanky Floukru man called Issak. Over the next few week other ambassadors arrived too, with only the furthest clans, such as Azgeda and Trishanakru, left as yet unrepresented. Suddenly Clarke was expected to attend a whole bunch of meetings about everything from trade deals to border control. Bellamy only really saw her when August needed feeding, which was less and less now, maybe six times a day. If you didn’t include the feed when he woke, and the two before bed, Bellamy only saw her intermittently for about a couple of hours a day before she was whisked away again, usually scowling. She hated being away from August, and August hated it too, Bellamy could tell. He was still at that age where Clarke was his world, no matter how much he loved Bellamy. Bellamy didn’t take it personally.

 

Neither he nor Clarke brought up what had happened the morning Octavia had walked in, and though Bellamy was sure he was still pulling her close whilst he slept, she never said a word about it, always rising too early for him to know for sure.

 

By the time the Podakru ambassador reached Polis, both Bellamy and Clarke were thoroughly homesick.

 

“Lincoln said Podakru want a meeting alone this afternoon,” Clarke revealed to Bellamy as she sat in their room feeding August. “Think they want to interrogate me before the dinner tonight?”

 

“I suppose you’re not allowed to just say no, right?”

 

She sent him a withering look in response. Because of course she wasn’t; she was the only one in this whole situation standing on ice, the rest of the ambassadors safe and sound on solid ground. Skaikru’s situation was precarious, she couldn’t deny the other clans anything right now. Lexa might be the commander, but she still needed the support of her war chiefs. Her offer of protection wasn’t absolute.

 

“Hey,” Bellamy knelt in front of Clarke, “why don’t we just escape for a bit?”

 

“What?”

 

“We’ve been here weeks and we still haven’t really seen Polis. Podakru technically haven’t asked you to meet yet, so if we disappear they can’t blame us. We’ve got some grounder clothes we can wear to blend in. Come on Clarke,” Bellamy pleaded. He was going stir crazy in this tower.

 

“What about August?” Clarke stroked August’s ear as he continued to feed.

 

“We’ll take him. It’s gotta be bad for his development to be cooped up all the time, right?” Bellamy held her knees as he spoke, a hopeful expression on his face.

 

“I don’t…” Clarke pursed her lips.

 

“It’ll be fun,” Bellamy smiled reassuringly.  

 

Corner of her lip quirking, Clarke nodded slightly. “Not for long though. I said I’d speak with Lexa before dinner.

 

After August was finished feeding, Bellamy changed him as Clarke washed her face and got dressed behind the screen in the corner of the room.

 

Walking back to his own room next door, the one he’d never actually slept in, he changed into some of the grounder clothes that had been left in a chest at the bottom of the bed. Collecting his handgun from the pants he’d stripped off, he tucked it into the back of his pants. He was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any problems, but he wasn’t taking any chances where Clarke and August were concerned. He took a small knife Octavia had gifted him from his pack and tucked it in his boot for good measure.

 

Clarke was waiting when he re-entered their room, August anchored to her front.

 

“You ready?”

 

“Yeah,” she said, pulling up her hood, blue eyes shining excitedly.

 

Sneaking out was kind of fun. Bellamy had been more well behaved than most kids in his teenage years, scared to bring the guard down on his family. He couldn’t risk trouble; he’d never snuck out after curfew, or gotten too drunk to make it home. He’d always made sure not to bring attention to himself. He and Clarke didn’t exactly have to sneak out either, they weren’t prisoners, but they also weren’t supposed to be outside without the guard.

 

“Hold on,” Bellamy hissed. A second or two from their exit, Bellamy saw Indra and Octavia headed their way. If they saw them they would definitely insist on accompanying them, and that would mean throwing anonymity out the window. Grabbing Clarke, Bellamy hauled her into a nearby alcove, pushing her against the wall with his body, careful not to crush August.

 

Clarke bit her lip and occupied herself with August, stroking his back to keep him calm.

 

Bellamy breathed out as Octavia and Indra passed by without seeing them, looking down to check on Clarke. “You both okay?”

 

Clarke nodded.

 

“Let’s go.” Bellamy guided her out the alcove with a hand pressed to the base of her spine.

 

They hurried out without looking back.

 

* * *

 

Clarke dangled a trinket from one of the stalls over August where he sat on her hip, dark eyes shining with wonder as he laughed and tried to grab at it. It was a stone of blue, a hole in the middle, dangling from a plaited string of black threads.

 

“Yu nomfa laik yuj. Yu laik fayored.” The woman behind the stall commented, smiling politely. _‘Your son is strong. You are blessed.’_

 

“Mochof,” Bellamy replied. _‘Thank you.’_ He gently took the trinket from Clarke and made to give it back to the seller, aware they didn’t have anything to give for it.

 

The seller waved her hand to discourage him, lips pursed, shaking her head. “Em ste os lott kom geef kom goufa. Kep in em.” _‘It is good luck to gift to children. Keep it.’_

 

Bellamy wasn’t sure of grounder customs in this area so he just accepted the gift politely. He and Clarke both thanked the woman before moving on.

 

“No one recognises you so far,” Bellamy pointed out, holding out his arms in an offer to take August from her. August reached out from him in response, and so that decided that.

 

Clarke watched as Bellamy wandered ahead a bit, only stopping briefly to lift August up to his face and kiss his nose. The baby laughed and kicked his feet in response, as he always did when happy. It was always in moments like these Clarke thought back to the start, when she and Bellamy had first met, and wondered how it was possible they’d got here. She remembered that reckless, angry boy so well. Bellamy’s new beard made him look a bit older, Clarke thought. Not by a lot, but he didn’t look at all like a boy anymore. He’d still very much had a boyish quality when they’d come down in the dropship. It was strange, how she almost missed it. She’d never felt distant from that version of Bellamy, even when they’d been at each other's throats. Nowadays it was like some moments she felt so close to him, closer than ever, but then, suddenly, an ocean would open up between them.

 

“Skaigoufa?” An incredulous, familiar voice interrupted Clarke’s pondering. She slowly turned, eyes growing wide, to see Gelma and Cullan gazing back at her with similar expressions of surprise and wonder. They looked exactly as they had the day she’d left over two months ago.

 

Clarke let out a small laugh of disbelief before falling into Gelma’s embrace. She’d hoped, but not really believed, she would see the woman again. “You’re here? How are you here?” Clarke said breathlessly into Gelma’s shoulder.

 

“I’m the chief of my village, here as a witness for Yujledakru, for Skaikru’s binding.”

 

Clarke released Gelma so she could take Cullan in her arms instead.

 

“The real question is why you are here, my friend?” Cullan squeezed Clarke back tightly before letting go.

 

“I’m sort of here for the same reason,” Clarke answered awkwardly. “You’ll see.” If they were here for the ceremony, she wouldn’t be able to hide her true identity for long. Clarke quickly decided that was an issue for another day.

 

“Where is August?” Gelma frowned, looking Clarke over.

 

Clarke literally hadn’t let August out her sight during that first month, so she understood Gelma’s immediate confusion.

 

“Clarke?” Bellamy’s voice came from behind her. He stood with August braced to his chest, facing toward them. Both of them staring at Gelma and Cullan with almost identical, wide, questioning brown eyes.

 

Clarke looked over her shoulder to gage Cullan and Gelma’s reactions. Gelma was frowning slightly, where Cullan just looked pleasantly intrigued.

 

“I always thought he must take after you.” Cullan smiled softly and knowingly.

 

Bellamy’s lips parted as if he might say something, but then met again. He looked to Clarke, a little thrown by Cullan’s comment.

 

“Um. Bellamy, this is Gelma and her daughter Cullan, they took care of me when August was a newborn.” Clarke looked to Gelma and Cullan, gesturing to Bellamy. “This is Bellamy... he’s August’s father.”

 

“He looks so strong,” Cullan exclaimed. For a moment Clarke froze, thinking Cullan was going to embarrass her, but the woman only had eyes for August, reaching out to take him from Bellamy. She grinned at the baby, and though Clarke wasn’t sure August recognised her, he seemed perfectly happy to be in her arms.

 

Gelma was too busy observing Bellamy critically to take as much notice of August as her daughter was.

 

“I…” Bellamy faltered under Gelma’s intense gaze, “I want to thank you, for taking care of them… for taking care of them when I couldn’t.”

 

Clarke wasn’t sure where that came from. Maybe it just felt like the thing to say? Either way, Bellamy seemed perfectly sincere, and it made her heart ache a bit. She was reminded of Octavia’s words to her all those weeks ago. How guilty and angry Bellamy had felt about her disappearance.

 

“It is everyone’s duty to care for mothers and children, no matter their kru; a healthy child is a gift. Were babies not so precious and desired in the sky?” Gelma continued to frown at Bellamy. She had grown protective of Clarke in the month she and August had spent in her village, and Clarke had never said much about August’s father, for obvious reasons. Clarke was sure Gelma had feared the worst, that he’d been abusive, or abandoned them. Hopefully, once Gelma knew the truth of Clarke’s identity, she would consider her status as Wanheda the reason she’d been so cagey about her past.

 

Bellamy looked truly pained for a moment. “No,” he said, a little coldly, “not always.”

 

Clarke sucked in a small, sharp breath. Babies on the Ark were purely necessary and always, always meticulously planned. Octavia and August were two of only seven children of Skaikru in a hundred years to be born to a set of parents not preemptively approved by the council, and Octavia was one of no than three hidden children. The other two unapproved children had been discovered early on, when they were still babies. What made Octavia unique was her youth; the other five 'unapproveds' had been part of the first arker generation, born to grounder parents. Aurora Blake had been the first woman to defy the population control laws in over 70 years.

 

Back on the Ark, it was all very controlled and clinical; couples applied to the council, were accepted, an implant was removed, then, as soon as there was a baby, it was screened in every possible way for any kind of defect. Occasionally there was a situation whereapon a faulty genetic component wasn’t noticed until adulthood, after the person in question had already reproduced, like Harper’s dad. Clarke shivered to think… if Danny McIntyre had developed symptoms earlier Harper would never have been born. Clarke wasn’t sure she agreed with it. It was a logical approach, but cold. On the Ark, August probably would have been terminated too. Outward deformities could promise other issues and the Ark hadn’t risked having residents that could be a drain on resources.

 

Gelma seemed to notice there was story behind Bellamy’s eyes, but hesitated to inquire after it.

 

“Things are going to be different here,” Clarke said, slipping a couple of fingers around Bellamy’s wrist, gaining his attention.

 

His gaze softened almost imperceptibly as he found hers.

 

“He is 3 months now. You should hold a naming.” Cullan kissed August’s forehead, smiling down at him.

 

“A naming?” Bellamy asked.

 

“We name children quickly. To not name a new child is to invite illness and death,” Gelma explained. “A naming is held once it is clear a child is strong. Parents may choose to change the child’s name to a better fit, and then present the child to their village.”

 

“My first name was Yujwana,” Cullan offered brightly.

 

“It means strong tide,” Gelma smiled fondly at her daughter. “Cullan fits you better _._ ”

 

Bellamy and Clarke both looked between Gelma and Cullan, expecting one to elaborate. After a few long moments Cullan spoke.

 

“Cullan doesn’t have a translation to english.” She seemed to be thinking deeply, trying to come up with one.

 

Gelma regarded Clarke and Bellamy. “Cullan is not a thing like the tide, it is an act. It means to die for love... to die for your family.” Gelma said proudly, before returning to the subject of a naming ceremony, “It is good to hold a naming to invite others into a child’s life.They should be raised by the village, not their parents alone.”

 

Clarke smiled to herself, thinking of how the delinquents had fought over who got to hold August and when could they babysit. She quite liked her and Bellamy’s little village. August didn’t just have them, no matter how much it felt like that in Polis sometimes. They didn’t need to hold any sort of ceremony or party, but maybe it would be nice, once they were home. Inviting in some harmless grounder traditions could only help Skaikru acclimate to being the 13th clan more quickly.

 

Clarke reached out and took Gelma’s hand, holding it tight. “I want to thank you, for… for being my village.”

 

* * *

 

“Do you want to change it?” Clarke asked a while later as they wandered back in the direction of the tower.

 

“Change what?” Bellamy paused making faces at August to look at her.

 

“August. You didn’t have a say in his name.”

 

“Oh.” Bellamy was a mix of both touched and confused. “No, I love his name.”

 

“Just, I remember when I first told you his name. You seemed-”

 

Bellamy cut her off with a short laugh he couldn’t contain. “I was just surprised, mainly.”

 

Clarke wore an unspoken question on her face, waiting for him to elaborate.

 

Bellamy shifted his grip on August so he could run a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. “It’s what I would have named Octavia, if she’d been a boy.”

 

“August?” Clarke said disbelievingly.

 

“Augustus. He was my favourite emperor.” Bellamy smiled at the ground. “You know, that really put the nails in the coffin, Clarke. From the second she found out August’s name, Octavia wouldn’t believe he wasn’t mine.”

 

A soft “Oh…” was all Clarke could manage. There were a few reasons for Octavia to be convinced August was Bellamy’s by now…

 

“Guess we were meant to be, huh?” Bellamy whispered into August’s hair.

 

They walked in comfortable silence a moment. Bellamy pressed a hand to Clarke’s back, guiding her gently through the maze of people into a more deserted area. Only a few other people meandered their way through the city.

 

“I never did ask, why ‘August’?” Bellamy said.

 

Clarke wrung her hands nervously, sending Bellamy a half-smile. “The night I found him there were shooting stars. Gelma told me about how in August there's always a night where hundreds of stars rain from the sky. The grounders call them the Tears of August. They think the more stars ride, bringing fire to earth, the kinder the winter will be. She said ‘the Tears of August are a beautiful thing’. And I… well, I looked down and August had started crying, stronger than he’d ever cried before, tears streaming down his cheeks, and he’d been so weak before. I was just so happy he was alive I…” Clarke faltered, a little embarrassed, feeling as if she was baring her soul, “it just felt right.”

 

“The Perseids.” Bellamy’s eyes were warm as they drank her in, making her shiver involuntarily. “That’s what astronomers called them, before the fires. Meteorites from the constellation of Perseus entering earth’s atmosphere.”

 

“Perseus… Andromeda’s husband?” Clarke thought aloud. It was one of the stories he’d told August, one of his favourite stories to tell.

 

“Yeah. Catholics thought they were the tears of a saint who was burned at the stake. Southern europeans had a myth that they brought fire to keep the plants warm through the winter. Mythology always gets muddled over time, so I guess the grounders have their version too.”

 

“I like it. The grounder version,” Clarke said.

 

“Me too,” Bellamy responded softly as August leant his little head securely against his shoulder, eyelids drooping. “I think we could use a kind winter.” Bellamy tried not to think too hard as he reached out and pulled Clarke into his side.

 

After that, Bellamy took to taking August out more, though he always made sure to take Octavia with him. Clarke could speak the grounders language a lot better than he could, and he didn’t want to single himself out by saying the wrong thing. Octavia was only too happy to come. Bellamy had wondered if maybe she’d felt a little put out by how attached August was to Raven, but when he’d finally decided to ask her about it she just said that she wasn’t one for babies and she was waiting till August got a bit more interesting, flashing her brother a dangerous smile.

 

“You’re not teaching my son to fight,” Bellamy said in response to the gleam in her eye.

 

“Like you’ll be able to stop him, Bell. You and Clarke are both almost as stubborn as me. That’s a lot of stubborn concentrated into one little person.” Octavia laughed as they continued to weave through the crowds.

 

As Bellamy had discovered, grounders became very different people when babies were involved. Indra had practically melted into a puddle when August had giggled at her. Occasionally people on the streets of Polis would stop Bellamy to compliment him on how strong, how healthy, how loud his son was. These compliments sometimes threw him, especially that last one, but he took it in his stride. Once a bunch of burly guys with tattooed faces and large grins had finished clapping Bellamy on the back, Octavia finally commented.

 

“I feel like Clarke should be getting more of the credit.”

 

“The grounders already think Clarke’s a superhero,” Bellamy laughed, faltering toward the end of his sentence, briefly remembering how that reputation had been built.

 

“A goddess might be more accurate,” Octavia said evenly.

 

Bellamy looked at her, thinking of asking what had been said to make her say that, but he didn’t. He didn’t need a reminder of how fascinated the grounders were by Clarke, thinking about it always put him on edge.

 

“You always did love a goddess, Bellamy.” Octavia smirked.

 

Bellamy just rolled his eyes and readjusted August where the boy was in the wrap, kept strapped upright at Bellamy’s side. He was too big at nearly four months to go in the wrap the way he did before. Besides, now he could hold his head up himself, he got frustrated when he couldn’t look around.

 

Browsing the stalls, Bellamy came across a junk dealer. Unlike the grounders, Bellamy had grown up with access to old movies and photos of the world before. He knew what these things had once been. Running his finger over a battered jewelry box, Bellamy’s brow furrowed. Two identical worn, dark red leather boxes with golden clasps on them sat underneath the jewelry box. Dust catching on his fingertips he removed the jewelry box and examined them, releasing the clasps to check inside. Bellamy’s smile grew. He could work with this, but he’d need both of them.

 

“Octavia,” He whispered to his sister when she came over to check on him, “can you ask him what he wants for these?”

 

Octavia quirked a sharp eyebrow at Bellamy, then drew away to engage the dealer. She begun a conversation that Bellamy didn’t understand, except for the fact it soon escalated into an argument. Octavia eventually yelled something gruffly, and thrust her favourite, home-crafted dagger, hilt forward, in his direction.

 

Bellamy’s lips parted in shock. “Octavia, you didn’t have to do-”

 

“I can make another.” Octavia cut him off, grabbing the leather boxes, lifting them with ease. She made sure to glare back at the dealer before stalking off, obviously expecting Bellamy to follow her.

 

* * *

 

 

Bellamy was fiddling with the boxes, legs crossed, sat on the wide ledge by the window when Clarke arrived back to their room. She eyed him carefully, trying to figure out what he was doing, as she made her way over to August’s cot. They’d taken the dressings off his feet a few days ago. All that remained of the deformity that had almost cost him his life was thin pink lines between his fourth and fifth toes. Currently August was taking full advantage of his new ability to stick his toes in his mouth. He grumbled as she picked him up, his toes falling out his mouth. Taking him to sit on the bed, Clarke watched Bellamy fiddle with and swear at the leather boxes for twenty minutes as she fed August.

 

Sticking her finger in August’s fist, Clarke watched Bellamy out the corner of her eye. “Where did they come from?”

 

“The market,” he answered simply, glancing up to send her a strained smile. Looking back down, he pursed his lips in concentration. After a moment, there was a soft click, and Bellamy let out a short, triumphant laugh.

 

“Are they…?” For the first time she’d got a good look inside the contraption, and it looked vaguely familiar. Clarke was sure they must be ancient things now though. No way they could do what they used to be able to.

 

“Wait for it, Princess,” Bellamy held up a large, black disc.

 

Rising from the bed to place a slumbering August back in his crib, she came over to inspect it, taking it gently by the edges. Squinting at the faint writing in the middle of the disc. “Unchained Melody?”

 

“The name of the song.” Bellamy took the disc back, slipping it into its place inside the box he pressed a button on some external battery he, or rather Raven, had patched into the record player. “I found it in the bottom one.”

 

The speakers on the player began to crackle. After a brief, but tense, moment, a soulful warbling voice floated out, washing over them. Clarke shivered, feeling her skin goosebump. The room soon filled with the sounds of string instruments and the deep baritone of the background singers.

 

_“Ohhhh, myyyy love…. my darlin’_

_I’ve huuungered for your touch,”_

 

Clarke knew this was old music. This had been old before the world had ended. There had been enough of a collection of songs saved to the library of the Ark for her to realise this, though it hadn’t been extensive. That’s why Maya’s ipod had been so exciting for a while, but Jasper tended to play the same songs again and again, and not a lot of it was to either Bellamy or Clarke’s taste.

 

Bellamy turned the volume down as Clarke moved to sit across from him, on the other side of the turntable.

 

The sun was long gone by now, and sitting by the window, they could watch the night sky glittering above them.

 

“Where’s Perseus?” Clarke asked softly.

 

“See that fuzzy, bright oval shape over there?” Bellamy leant in her direction, shuffling to line up their faces, so he could point it out to her.

 

“Yeah,” Clarke said.

 

“That’s Andromeda. He’s by her side. See the fork, how they’re sort of reaching out for each other?”

 

Bellamy’s breath ghosted against her cheek. “Bellamy?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Why is Andromeda your favourite?” Clarke kept her eyes up, taking in the sky, though she felt his searching her face.

 

“A princess sent to die for her parent’s sins? Octavia says I have a type.” Bellamy smiled, but then immediately regretted his choice of words, having revealed perhaps too much.

 

Clarke drew a breath in between her teeth, brow furrowed.

 

“Um. Truthfully?” Bellamy swallowed roughly. “I used to think it might give Octavia some hope. Andromeda was a doomed for her mother’s actions and…” Bellamy trailed off. He couldn’t speak badly of his mother. He would always both love Aurora Blake unconditionally, and yet hate her unendingly for bringing Octavia into the world knowing it could only end in tragedy.

 

Clarke placed a hand on his knee, recalling him to the present. “And?”

 

Bellamy looked at her with such honesty it almost broke her heart. Speaking gently, he said, “And… she got a happy ending. No one else did… just her and Perseus.”

 

Clarke didn’t trust herself to move. She considered the earnest look in Bellamy’s dark eyes, studying it with interest.

 

A second later he blinked, and stood, turning the volume on the record player back up. The voice on the record had grown even more plaintive as they’d talked, heartbreak heavy in his tone.

 

 _“Lonely rivers sigh_  
_‘Wait for me, wait for me’_ _  
_ I'll be coming home… wait for meeeee.”

 

When Bellamy offered his hand, Clarke just stared at it.

 

“Come on, a song like this is _meant_ to be danced to,” Bellamy encouraged her.

 

Hesitantly, Clarke slipped her hand into his.

 

Tugging her up, he pulled her in close, placing a hand on her back. She fell against his chest.

 

The box crooned on. “ _Ooooh, my love… my darlin’_

 _I’ve hungered… hungered for your touch_.”

 

“When Octavia was little I used to dance her around, but we never had music.” Bellamy murmured, laughter in his voice, his lips by Clarke’s ear as they swayed.

 

“Did you sing?” Clarke laughed. She had to know. The thought of a fifteen year old Bellamy Blake swinging his giggling little sister around their one room apartment, singing terribly off key, seemed the kind of thing that would be Bellamy’s forte.

 

“No one wanted that.” He laughed. “You don’t want to hear me sing, trust me.” Bellamy’s lips brushed accidentally against her ear as they moved. He took Clarke’s shudder as a sign that she was feeling the night’s chill. “Are you cold?”

 

“A little.’ She actually was, though that hadn’t been the reason she was shivering.

 

Bellamy pulled her in closer, rubbing a hand up and down her back to try and warm her up a bit. “We should get some sleep.”

 

“Yeah,” Clarke responded, her voice barely more than a whisper.

 

The song came to its conclusion as they crawled into bed. Not waiting for pretense or excuse this time, Bellamy just reached out and pulled her into his chest, his nose resting at the nape of her neck. Maybe he couldn’t have everything, but, for now at least, he could have this.

 

Clarke let out a long breath in response, and  placed her hand over his where it was splayed on her stomach, turning her head into her pillow.

 

As he brushed his thumb over the scar left by the arrow that had tried to take her from him, neither of them said a word.

 

* * *

 

 

The only problem with keeping August away from people was mealtimes. Specifically, dinners, since all guests ate together with the commander. Eating with a three month old on your lap wasn’t easy, but Clarke had kind of mastered it. Tonight August was making it pretty easy, having spent the day with Raven, he was busy falling asleep in Clarke’s arms.

 

Clarke hated having him with her for dinners now that so many of the ambassadors were present, but there was nothing to do. Lexa insisted on Skaikru’s presence, and Clarke wasn’t going to leave August with anyone she didn’t trust. She’d considered trying to find Gelma or Cullan and asking them, but she had no idea how to contact them.

 

“Here. I’m finished.” Bellamy stood, leaning over Clarke in an offer to take August, so she could use both hands.

 

Clarke leant back so Bellamy could scoop August into his arms. “Thanks.”

 

Bellamy lifted August up to his face, kissing both his cheeks in turn with a smile on his face. “Oof. You’re getting so heavy, little man.”

 

“Think he’s going to be tall?” Kane asked from where he sat on the other side of Clarke.

“My dad was tall,” Clarke said. Then she quickly remembered August didn’t actually share any DNA with her, or her father.

 

“Yes, he was, wasn’t he,” Kane said quietly, and somewhat guiltily.

 

Clarke didn’t talk about Jake Griffin much, and when she did, she tended not to do so with Kane or her mother. Not after the parts they’d played in his death.

 

“I bet he’s going to be taller than you, Bell.” Octavia paused eating and pointed at her brother with her spoon.

 

“Do you think he’s on the longish side?” Bellamy asked Clarke, bringing August into his shoulder.

 

“My mom thinks so,” was all Clarke could offer. She didn’t have enough experience with other babies to be able to compare.

 

Bellamy pressed a kiss to August’s temple as the baby began to drool on his collar, eyes now closed, arms hanging limp. Bellamy swayed on his feet to rock him.

 

“Bell.” Octavia said tightly. Once he was looking at her, she jerked her head to motion away from Skaikru, across the dining hall.

 

He was attracting stares; looks of confusion and interest more than anything else.

 

On instinct, Clarke stood sharply to take August back, and of course, this attracted even more attention.

 

“It’s okay, let’s just sit back down,” Bellamy stroked his hands over her upper arms, trying to get her to look up at him. He resisted the urge to brush his thumb over the crease between her brows.

 

Just as they began to sit, the sounds of shouting and jeering rose outside the doors of the hall.

 

Two of Lexa’s guards burst through the door a moment later. “Heda. Prince Roan has arrived as ambassador of Azgeda,” one announced gruffly, facing them. Lexa had been seated on the other side of Kane, but now she was on her feet, jaw visibly clenched. She wasn’t any happier to see Azgeda than Skaikru was.

 

A second later a broad man with dark braided hair and a beard marched in, hand on his sword hilt. He wore white war paint over a determined expression, the furs around his collar were the greys and whites of snow foxes. Though he was overdressed for the weather, there was no evidence he was uncomfortable, the paint on his face unmarred by sweat. Showing no sign of slowing, he continued moving till he was stood right before the high table.

 

“Heda,” he acknowledged Lexa with apparent reverence, kneeling, lips pursed. A second later his gaze trailed across to where Clarke was clutching August to her chest.

 

Without even thinking about how hostile it would look, Bellamy moved in front of Clarke, blocking August completely from Prince Roan’s view.

 

“Wanheda,” Prince Roan said in a gruff, level tone, nodding at Clarke, the corner of his lips quirking upward.

 

Bellamy heard a sharp intake of breath behind him, simultaneously feeling Clarke clutch his arm tightly.

 

“No,” Clarke murmured to herself, her tone filled with disbelief and horror.

 

Feeling her release his arm very suddenly, Bellamy looked down to see what she was doing, seeing her fingers trailing over where the scar at her side lay under her shirt. Her eyes wide and brimming with angry tears as she stared at Roan. Suddenly, Bellamy understood all too well.

 

Seeing red, Bellamy felt his entire body tense, his nails biting into the skin of his palms.

 

Clarke caught him looking at her, and dropped her hand from her wounded side quickly, as if burned. When she spoke her tone was almost pleading, “Bellamy-”

 

Bellamy cried out through gritted teeth,  throwing himself across the table toward where Roan was still kneeling, gripping him by the furs, Bellamy used surprise as a weapon and pushed the already kneeling larger man flat on his back with a loud thud that echoed throughout the otherwise horribly silent hall, straddling his chest and clasping him around the neck with one hand; this man could have killed Clarke; this man could have killed August; this man tried to take both of them from him. Bellamy would never have met his son. He would have blamed himself for Clarke forever… missed her forever. Bellamy’s breathing was shaky and laboured, a tear spilling from one eye. Filled with rage, he pulled that small, razor sharp knife Octavia had given him from his boot.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry im sorry im sorry


	6. Just Us, Only Us

_“No,” Clarke murmured to herself, her tone filled with disbelief and horror._

 

_Feeling her release his arm very suddenly, Bellamy looked down to see what she was doing, seeing her fingers trailing over where the scar at her side lay under her shirt. Her eyes wide and brimming with angry tears as she stared at Roan. Suddenly, Bellamy understood all too well._

 

_Seeing red, Bellamy felt his entire body tense, his nails biting into the skin of his palms._

 

_Clarke caught him looking at her, and dropped her hand from her wounded side quickly, as if burned. When she spoke her tone was almost pleading, “Bellamy-”_

 

_Bellamy cried out through gritted teeth,  throwing himself across the table toward where Roan was still kneeling, gripping him by the furs, Bellamy used surprise as a weapon and pushed the already kneeling larger man flat on his back with a loud thud that echoed throughout the otherwise horribly silent hall, straddling his chest and clasping him around the neck with one hand; this man could have killed Clarke; this man could have killed August; this man tried to take both of them from him. Bellamy would never have met his son. He would have blamed himself for Clarke forever… missed her forever. Bellamy’s breathing was shaky and laboured, a tear spilling from one eye. Filled with rage, he pulled that small, razor sharp knife Octavia had given him from his boot._

 

“Bellamy!” Octavia’s desperate yell broke through the haze of anger.

 

Bellamy looked up to meet her eyes, the burning emotions of pain and rage dying away to leave an ashen, haunted look on his face. Another tear trailed its way down his cheek.

 

“It was him. It was him, Octavia,” Bellamy tried to explain.

 

She only looked more confused and anxious behind her fierce, dark warpaint. It should have been impossible for her to look vulnerable, but apparently it wasn’t.

 

“He could have killed Clarke. He tried. He could have killed my son. My son…” Bellamy let out a ragged breath, his grip on the knife still tight.

 

Roan stared up at him with a dark look, staying very still. For now Bellamy was engaged with Octavia, but if Roan moved, Bellamy would probably kill him.

 

“You weren’t there, Octavia. You don’t… I had to hold August as he screamed, watching Clarke bleed out in my arms because _he…”_ Bellamy shuddered, sniffing loudly. He pursed his lips and held his jaw tight to stop his bottom lip quivering.

 

“Bellamy,” Clarke’s voice drew his gaze. Her blue eyes had filled with tears too, though her jaw was firmly set.

 

Bellamy blinked, stilling a moment as he regarded her. What right did he have to be more angry than her? What right did he have to take Roan’s life?

 

Bellamy’s eyes fell to August where he was clutching Clarke’s shirt, curled into her side. He was sniffling, quietly. Babies cried for attention, loud and desperate, but August wasn’t crying like that now. He briefly looked at Bellamy through dark, wet, concerned eyes. August had never seen him angry before; he was scaring him. Realising this, Bellamy suddenly felt ill, his stomach convulsing.

 

“Please,” Clarke implored Bellamy. They could still come back from this, but killing Roan would start a war. It would make Bellamy a target… make Octavia one, make August even more of one. He would put Clarke in danger. His people would be wiped out. His friends killed and maimed because he’d lost his temper. His hand began to tremble, as he itched to cut Roan, make him feel what Clarke had felt. But not here, not today, not by Bellamy’s hand.

 

Still looking only at Clarke and August, Bellamy dropped the knife with a dull clatter against the stone. The entire hall seemed to let out a breath of relief as he got up and backed away from Roan, the backs of his legs hitting the high table lightly.

 

Two Azgeda warriors ran forward to offer to help their prince, but Roan shoved them away with a grunt and rose to his feet. With his eyes on Bellamy, he took a step forward, but before he could make another a blade appeared at his throat.

 

“Don’t,” Octavia warned him. “Heda,” she addressed Lexa, “you know better than I what must happen now. Jus drein jus draun.” _‘Blood must have blood.’_

 

Lexa looked somber as she nodded. “Prince Roan, you stand accused of attempted murder. Do you deny it?”

 

“I do not deny that I was one of many who hunted Wanheda before she was to be allied with us, to capture, not kill. She was not our friend, nor will she truly be before the binding. Our laws to not apply to the Sky rats,” he spat.

 

“You endangered a child. You know that our laws apply regardless of clan in this case.” Lexa’s face was stony, revealing nothing but mild distaste for Roan.

 

He squared his shoulders, not allowing himself to seem small. “I was not aware the boy was with her.” Despite his deamour, the words were soft, and carried obvious regret.

 

Clarke appeared at Bellamy’s side, having walked round the table to stand beside him. Bellamy, needing to make things right, stroked a gentle hand over August’s hair, running a thumb over his cheek. The baby burrowed into Clarke, clutching her shirt tightly.

 

August wasn’t crying anymore, but it still hurt. Feeling rejected, Bellamy withdrew his hand, making a fist at his side instead. He could feel Clarke’s eyes on his face, but he didn't meet them.

 

“Our laws apply regardless,” Lexa replied to Roan coolly. Walking round the table she came to stand in front of Clarke. Lexa drew the blade at her hip with deliberation, holding it out hilt first so Clarke could take it.

 

Clarke shook her head slowly, not entirely understanding.

 

“While you are under my roof you are my people, and our laws require 50 cuts for such a crime. It is our way, and now it must be yours. You must be the one to make them, Clarke.” Lexa’s expression was unreadable.

 

“No,” Clarke responded before she could think about it.

 

There was a spate of reactionary muttering and murmuring from the dinner guests.  

 

“I will not begin this alliance with bloodshed,” Clarke clarified, increasing her volume to carry to the whole room. “I will not shed the blood of my allies… not if there’s another way.” Clarke stared Roan down.

 

He was watching her with some strange, uncertain admiration.

 

“Clarke?” Octavia’s frown deepening, it over her features. She apparently wasn’t anymore pleased with this than Bellamy was.

 

“Prince Roan, I will disregard your debt… if you swear to me,” Clarke continued.

 

“You cannot ask me to swear myself to another sovereign, Wanheda. I cannot serve two.” Roan looked at her with intrigue.

 

“Not another sovereign.” Clarke lifted her chin. “You will swear to my son.”

 

Roan’s features softened. He nodded. “What would you have my oath be?”

 

Clarke adjusted August on her hip. “From now on, he will be under your protection. You will never harm him, nor employ others to do so. If he should be harmed by the hand of any Azgeda, you will take responsibility, and carry the punishment along with the perpetrator.”

Lexa’s lips quirked into a smile, watching Clarke. She turned to Roan. “Wanheda has made you an offer, Prince Roan. Will you take this oath, and forgo your cuts?”

 

Roan swallowed harshly. He must know if Clarke cut deep enough, in the right place, he could bleed out. Bleed out like she almost had. And Clarke was the sort to know exactly where to cut him. This wasn’t just about the pain; it was this oath, or his life. Kneeling in front of Clarke, he drew his sword and laid it down at her feet.

 

Everyone present seemed to be holding their breath in anticipation.

 

“Ai badan yu klin, August kom Skaikru, kom disha sintaim, til sintaim gon ai wamplei.” Roan said evenly, looking up at where August sat in Clarke’s arms. _‘I swear loyalty to you, August of the sky clan, from this day, till the day of my death.’_

 

“Rise, Prince Roan.” Lexa picked Roan’s sword off the ground, taking a step back.

 

“Hold out your arms,” Clarke ordered.

 

Roan did as he was told, nostrils flared and eyebrows knitted. Waiting for Clarke’s next move.

 

After a tense moment, Clarke drew a now placated and calm August away from herself, and placed him in Roan’s large, leatherbound arms.

 

Bellamy’s eyes grew wide, and he stepped closer into Clarke’s side to talk in hushed tones, “Clarke, I don’t think this-”

 

“Trust me, Bellamy. Please,” she said under her breath, holding his gaze.

 

The pair looked back to watch the moment unfold, both of them fighting the urge to grab August back.

 

Roan was very large, causing August to appear the size of a newborn again.

 

August reached for his face, intrigued by his beard. When he couldn’t reach he wriggled and whined.

 

In response Roan lifted him a little higher.

 

August closed a tiny hand around Roan’s nose and let forth a squeal that quickly turned to a gurgled chuckle.

 

Roan couldn’t help but look both unnerved and amused.

 

The situation gained a similar reaction from their audience, a few short, muffled sniggers rippling through the hall.

 

Raising his gaze to meet with Clarke and Bellamy’s in turn, Roan looked deadly serious once again, the tiny hand attached to his nose moving to tug on his beard. “I will watch over your son. For the blood I spilled, now my blood belongs to him.”

 

* * *

 

“Bellamy?” Clarke said again

 

He’d been busy staring out the window as Clarke changed August’s diaper before bed.

 

“Hm?” He finally responded.

 

“Kane was saying we shouldn’t seem in a hurry to leave after the binding. Lexa says it’s customary for the rest of ambassadors to leave first.”

 

Bellamy just nodded, not fully taking it in. “Sure. That’s fine.” What was another week or two at this point?

 

Clarke lay August in his crib and came over to tug lightly on Bellamy’s arm, trying to get her to look at him. “Hey. You’ve been quiet since dinner.”

 

He chewed his lip a moment, drawing a little blood. “You really think you did the right thing tonight? Making Prince Roan do that,” Bellamy said through gritted teeth.

 

Clarke looked taken aback, and a little hurt, her hand falling from Bellamy’s arm. She took a step away.

 

Bellamy breathed out through his nose, looking down at his feet. “I thought we agreed to keep August away from him.”

 

“It was a little late for that. This solution is more permanent,” Clarke responded quietly.

 

“You put our son in the arms of a man who tried to kill you, Clarke.” Bellamy’s tone grew more and more desperate and strained, “You didn’t even consult me on it you just…” He sat on the window ledge and buried his head in his hands.

 

Clarke refused to be intimidated any further, crossing her arms tightly in front of her. “No. You’re smart, Bellamy. You _know_ I made the right choice today. What’s this really about?”

 

“Don’t analyse me,” Bellamy said bitterly.

 

“We’re in this together, you have to be open with-”

 

“Are we? Are we in this together?” Bellamy looked up at her darkly. He didn’t completely understand why he was acting this way toward her, but he was angry… really angry. “Maybe we shouldn’t be _in this_ at all.”

 

“What do you mean?” Clarke knew what he meant, but she dared him to say it.

 

“Aren’t we kidding ourselves, Clarke?” Bellamy burst out, throwing his hands up. He stood sharply, beginning to pace up and down in front of the window. “Are we really the best thing for him? Aren’t we being a bit selfish?”

 

Clarke grew quiet. She’d had the same doubts, of course. She’d originally intended to give August up, to find him a family that was safe and uncomplicated.

 

“We have so much blood on our hands, Clarke. Children…” Bellamy choked out a sob, roughly wiping tears from his eyes. “Babies,” He added in a whisper.

 

“I know.” Clarke fell onto the window ledge, staring at the hands in her lap.

 

“Today, seeing August so-” Bellamy faltered. “Octavia grew up so afraid. I can’t raise another scared kid, Clarke.” Bellamy sat down heavily beside her.

 

“August is going to be fine, Bellamy,” Clarke turned toward him. She reached out and placed a hand where his own sat on his knee. “And... he isn’t scared of you.”

 

Bellamy lifted his gaze sharply to meet hers. So, she’d seen it too. “He saw what I am today. He saw me ready to kill someone, Clarke.”

 

“He’s a baby. He’ll forget,” Clarke rationalised.

“I won’t.” Bellamy would never be able to unsee the fear in August’s eyes, or how he turned away from his hand.

 

“A boy I knew once told me ‘Who we are, and who we need to be to survive, are very different things’.”

 

“He sounds like a douchebag,” Bellamy said dryly.

 

Clarke let out a short huff of laughter. She curled her fingers under his hand so she could grip it. “If we gave him up now, he’d think we were abandoning him. Could you do that?”

 

“No.” Bellamy shook his head and sighed. “Never.”

 

“You’ll never be a killer to him, Bellamy. You’re only ever going to be his dad.”

 

They sat in silence a while, Clarke’s words resonating.

 

“You always talked me down. Always talked everyone down… took care of everyone,” Bellamy commented, his gaze soft as he looked to her, “back at the dropship.”

 

“So did you, in your own way,” Clarke smiled at him, and this time he returned it.

 

“You know… when you think about it, August’s kind of our 100th child.” Bellamy wriggled his eyebrows at her, his smile widening further as Clarke began to laugh, pressing her forehead into his shoulder.

 

“I’m sorry,” He muttered into her hair.

 

“It’s okay. I already forgave you.”

 

* * *

 

“So… today’s the day, August,” Clarke murmured to him as she placed him back in his crib. He’d woken early to be fed, and now seemed eager to go back to sleep again.

 

“Clarke.” Bellamy said gruffly, looking at her through half-open eyes from where he lay on the pillows. He threw back her half of the covers, beckoning her back. “It’s still early.”

 

She nodded curtly, and clambered back under the furs. Curling in on herself, she faced him. She shivered a little as her body reacclimated itself to the warmth of the sheets after standing in the cold.

 

Reaching across the bed Bellamy caught her by the waist and using her weight as an anchor pulled himself closer to her, catching her head under his chin. It wasn’t intimate in the same way they’d slept before. This was just about comfort. He removed his hand from her waist and pulled the furs all the way to her neck, finally running his hand over her hair, gently tucking a rogue strand behind her ear. He held her there. The warm little breaths hitting his chest becoming slow and even as she fell back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

It was like a strange quietness came over the whole of Polis as the grounders gathered for the binding. Lexa had explained it was tradition for it to take place as the sun set. A sunrise meant a new beginning, no matter your beliefs; grounder or sky person.

 

Clarke kissed August as the grounders finished lighting the candles, and passed him to Bellamy.

 

“You ready?” He asked.

 

Clarke looked at him, the blue and black warpaint dark around her eyes, making the shades of blue in her eyes seem cooler and sharper. She nodded, pulling up a grey hood to cover her carefully braided, golden hair. “Let’s get this over with. Finally.”

 

“Wanheda. It is time.” It was perhaps appropriate that it was Garon, the night rider that had first arrived to bring them to Polis, who’d come to fetch Clarke for the binding ceremony.

 

“Don’t forget the words.” Bellamy smirked.

 

“Don’t jinx it,” Clarke responded, raising an eyebrow at him.

 

“You’ll be fine.” Bellamy stroked his free hand down her arm.

 

“Wanheda,” Garon called again, more earnestly.

 

Bellamy wasn’t sure what exactly he’d been expecting a grounder ‘binding’ to consist of. But it seemed to involve a lot of bleeding…

 

Lexa first got Clarke to slit open her own hand and bound it to her own, which was just... incredibly unsanitary. Bellamy saw Clarke wince, and he was pretty sure it just wasn’t just from the pain.

 

Words were exchanged that Bellamy barely understood. There were mentions of family and loyalty and honour. The ambassadors each pledged themselves to Skaikru, and Clarke pledged Skaikru to them in return.

 

Finally Clarke knelt before Lexa and an elderly man with a knife and a small pot of black liquid, ink, stepped forward. Brushing Clarke’s hair over either shoulder, he exposed the back of her neck. Clarke tensed as he carved the mark of the commanders into her flesh, smaller and less obvious than Lexa’s. Bellamy winced harder as the man inserted the ink into her wound, marking her forever. Evidence for all to see. Clarke was branded by the coalition. This was a bond meant to last a lifetime.

 

Lexa stepped forward, and knelt across from Clarke, teeth gritted. The man who’d tattooed Clarke helped Lexa remove her cloak. She held out her right arm to reveal a line of small tattoos on the upper inside, just below her armpit, each of them the perfect images of the symbols of the twelve original clans. The tattoo artist knelt beside her, and with the same fine-bladed knife, carved the trinity symbol of the Ark into Lexa’s skin, lining it up perfectly with the rest. Bellamy was sure it must hurt, but Lexa didn’t even blink.

 

Later Bellamy would silently check on Clarke’s mark whilst she occupied herself with August. Running a thumb over the skin nearby, careful not to smudge the ink, or hurt her at all.

 

Clarke turned so that his hand fell, and regarded him with a soft gaze full of determination, but also a form of gratitude, thankful perhaps that he was there, that he bothered to check up on her. Silently, with a single look she told him that she was okay.

 

August was nodding off against her shoulder before long. It had been a long day for all of them, and he had barely got any naps in at all compared to the usual.

 

“Hey!” Raven’s voice reached them as she shoved her way through the throng of celebrating grounders.

 

The binding had devolved into a feast, followed by a night of drinking. Bellamy had seen at least five sodden grounders being hauled home by their friends, and the night was still young.

 

“Can’t be dealing with all this. I’ll put August to bed now if you like.” Raven sighed, reaching out for the little boy.

 

“Oh, Raven. No-” Clarke started to protest.

 

“It’s all good, Clarke. Here for all your babysitting needs. Remember?” Raven didn’t tolerate anymore of Clarke’s words of refusal, tucking her hands under August.

 

“I’ll come and get him later,” Bellamy said.

 

“It’s cool. You guys have the night off; some together time. I’ll bring him back first thing.” Raven waved the suggestion away as she gently bounced August. He was now pretty much fast asleep against her neck, starting to drool on her shirt.

 

Bellamy was just about self aware enough to realise that at the moment he was terrified of being alone with Clarke. He had barely ever been alone with her since she’d returned to Arkadia. August was always there, to divert their attention. A perfect distraction. Anytime they got too close, Bellamy made it about August, and the awkwardness would evaporate. It was how he coped. Spending the night alone with Clarke, without August in the room, that seemed a bad idea. Should he go sleep in his own room? The only reason he’d been in hers in the first place was to help protect August. He’d never really admitted he was there to protect Clarke too. Not to Clarke anyway.

 

“Raven. We don’t need ‘together time’,” Bellamy said firmly.

 

“Seriously. We can come get him, it’s fine,” Clarke agreed, quickly brushing over the implications of Raven’s words.

 

Raven let out a exasperated breath and lowered her lips to murmur to August, _“_ Tus padres son un par de idiotas.”

 

“What?” Clarke frowned.

 

“Nothing,” Raven said quickly, masking indigence with a faux innocent expression. “I’ll bring him back first thing, I promise.” She was already striding away.

 

“Octavia,” Bellamy jogged over and caught her elbow, pulling her attention away from where she was deep in discussion with Indra. “Can you follow Raven?”

 

Octavia furrowed her brow in confusion.

 

“Just to her room. She’s taking August for the night,” Bellamy explained.

 

“Chill, papa bear, he’ll be fine.” Octavia laughed.

 

Bellamy continued to regard her worryingly. Clarke caught up to them, a similarly concerned look on her face. They trusted Raven with their lives, but she couldn’t fight off anyone who came after either her or August. Not with her leg the way it was.

 

Octavia looked between them, face falling as she noticed the genuine concern. Realising the reality of the still tenuous relationship between Skaikru and the other clans, and how August was caught in the middle Octavia nodded, smiling reassuringly. “Anything for my nephew.” Turning to Indra she bowed out, offering a goodnight in Trigedasleng.

 

It wasn’t that much later that Gelma finally found Clarke.

 

Clarke offered an apology over a greeting. “I’m sorry I know it must be a shock, if you-”

 

“Clarke. I knew,” Gelma placed a hand on her shoulder with a smile. “A golden haired sky girl on the run. I knew the stories. I heard them a few weeks before you came to us. I would be a fool not to see it.”

 

Clarke didn’t know what to say, eyes wide. “But you took me in. Cullan?”

 

“She did not know till tonight. She did not hear the stories of Wanheda in as much detail as I.” Gelma stroked a hand over Clarke’s cheek. “I did not care what you were, Skaigoufa. What you _are_ is far more important.”

 

“And what am I?” Clarke asked softly.

 

Gelma paused a moment before finding what she wanted to say. “A mother, with a baby too small and weak to feed,” Gelma said sadly, eyes gentle, “and a girl, far too young to be so alone.”

 

“I’m neither of those things now,” Clarke argued.

 

Gelma’s gaze drifted from Clarke to where Bellamy stood with Miller, arms crossed as they discussed something heatedly.  “Family… it’s not so much about being with people, as it is allowing people to be with you. Remember that, Clarke.”

 

* * *

 

It was the early hours. They hadn’t wanted to leave before any of the other ambassadors. It seemed rude, with the feast thrown in their honour.

 

Bellamy wavered in the hallway on the way back to their room… rooms. Her room? He still as of yet wasn’t sure if it was his.

 

He stopped as they reached the door, frozen in place. There was an ache deep in his bones that he couldn’t account for.

 

“Bellamy?” Clarke’s voice reached him. She was already halfway through the door, waiting for him.

 

He didn’t let himself think about it too much. Not when Clarke crawled in the bed and drew close, curling in on herself. Or when she let her head rest against his chest. No August. No buffers. No excuses. It was just them this time, and it terrified him.

 

* * *

 

 

In the end it wasn’t Raven that woke them, but yells of panic and slap of bare feet hitting concrete.

 

Not bothering to dress. Clarke and Bellamy burst out their room in their nightclothes to see Octavia running toward them, clothed, but with a face clear of warpaint. Eyes wide with shock.

 

“Hey.” Bellamy swallowed roughly, taking her by the shoulders to steady her. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

 

“Someone shot the commander,” Octavia said.

 

Clarke was wide awake from the moment she heard those words. “Where have they taken her?”

 

“Her quarters. Nyko is with-”

 

Clarke was already moving, shoving past Octavia in her haste.

 

“Clarke!” Bellamy made to run after her.

 

“Let her go, Bell. This is what she does. Go be with your son, okay?” Octavia gripped his arm as she spoke with somewhat uncharacteristic wisdom.

 

Following Octavia, Bellamy gathered with Skaikru in Kane’s quarters. It was torture, for want of a better word. He held onto August like a lifeline, occupying himself with keeping his son entertained while they waited for news. Skaikru didn’t talk much. Initially they spoke in hushed tones about who, about why this had happened. Soon they fell into silence.

 

After a while, Raven asked the million dollar question, “What happens to us if Lexa dies?”

 

No one knew the answer.

 

* * *

 

“What happened?” Clarke demanded to know, worry lining her face as she pushed through the doors.

 

Nyko ignored her and continued to work on Lexa. She was lain on top of the furs, most of her shirt cut away to reveal a small but devastating wound to her side, an arrow still lodged between her fifth and sixth ribs. Clarke sucked in a short breath to see how pallid she was, with her eyelids fluttering lightly, barely conscious.

 

“An arrow. It came out of nowhere,” Garon answered Clarke, pursing his lips so tight they turned white.

 

Clarke went to Lexa, running her eyes over the beads of sweat on her forehead and the blue tinge of her lips as she struggled to breathe. Heard the faint crackling sound.

 

“Her lung’s collapsed,” Clarke stated hurriedly, rolling the sleeves of her sleep shirt up. “I need alcohol, spirits if you have it. A small knife. A tube with a hole through it like a uh.. uh straw. Go,” she stared with an intensity at Garon, before turning back to Lexa. “We need to get her stable. Lincoln I’m going to have to get you to hold her down.”

 

Allowing the calm voice of her mother to fill her brain, Clarke worked, keeping her hands steady and detached from her frayed emotions. They had to revive her two times, the second time, after Lexa was breathing again, Clarke threw up from the stress. By the time it was done, Lexa had lost a lot of blood, and half of it painted Clarke’s clothes, staining them black.

 

Clarke stayed with her, sending Lincoln and Nyko away to get some more sleep, despite their protests.

 

The few hours slipped by all too slowly. Clarke gasped as she saw Lexa’s eyes flutter open so wide and clear, sure she would be in and out for days. That she would for now be rarely conscious, let alone cognisant. Lexa was strong.

 

“Clarke?” She croaked.

 

“Hey,” Clarke answered softly, taking Lexa’s hand. “How do you feel?”

 

“I saw the commanders. All of them. I thought it was my time.”

 

Clarke wasn’t sure she’d ever heard Lexa sound scared before… not like this. “No. Not yet. You’re strong.”

 

Lexa moved ever so slightly, and hissed, glancing angrily down at her side. “The shooter?”

 

“An enemy of the coalition. They got him,” Clarke was glad she didn’t have to lie. Lexa would have insisted on marching off to find her justice. Turned out the perpetrator had been barely more than a boy, angry, seeking revenge for family killed by parts of the falling Ark, expressing grief the wrong way… like Finn. Now they were both dead.

 

“Was it bad… the wound?” Lexa studied Clarke’s pensive face.

 

“You’re here. You’re going to be fine,” Clarke said by way of an answer. The truth was obvious on her face. _‘Yes. You died… twice. Yes, it was bad.’_

 

“So… she does command death after all,” Lexa smiled at Clarke, gaze soft in her admiration. Running her eyes over her the black stains on Clarke’s white shirt took her interest, drying an ashy colour. Clarke had scrubbed her hands, but there was no saving the shirt. “Sorry, about your clothes.”

 

“This uh… this is actually Bellamy’s,” Clarke voiced it more as a realisation, than a confession. She hadn’t had anything clean to sleep in so she’d taken it, knowing he wouldn’t mind.

 

Lexa nodded, as much as she could with her head heavy on the pillows. “Perhaps that is fitting.”

 

Clarke was left to wonder what she meant by that.

 

“I see why you chose him. The way he looked at you before he released Roan. He is loyal, and he loves your son,” Lexa produced the words as if pulling her own teeth, though her eyes betrayed a respect.

 

Clarke sighed, by now completely fed up of explaining. “Bellamy and I-”

 

“That’s all I wanted to say, Clarke.” Lexa ground her teeth. She didn’t want to talk about Clarke and Bellamy’s relationship if she could help it. “We could have been good too,” she said, the corner of her mouth twitching upward in a small smirk.

 

Clarke gripped Lexa’s hand tighter, and then lifted it to brush her lips against her knuckles, smiling back. “I know.” Sometimes she did wonder ‘what if?’. If there was no August, would she stay in Polis with Lexa? Would it have worked? She thinks… maybe it could have. “We could have been _great_ ,” Clarke agreed.

 

* * *

 

After Lincoln returned to their quarters to sleep, bringing news of the commander’s survival, Bellamy took that as the all clear to bring August to Clarke. He was hungry, having had nothing but a little goats milk all morning.

 

Almost walking in on Clarke and Lexa having a moment wasn’t what Bellamy had been expecting to find. He didn’t feel much, but a cool rush over his skin as he watched Clarke press a kiss to Lexa’s fingers in what seemed too intimate an act for allies, or even friends. He would have backed away, come back later, but then August began to cry.

 

Clarke seemed to flinch, dropping Lexa’s hand as soon as she heard him. Clambering off the bed, she rushed over to the door to usher them in.

 

“Sorry,” Bellamy grumbled, “little man’s hungry.”

 

Clarke looked physically pained at the thought.

 

“You okay?” He frowned.

 

“Yeah, it’s just… an ache,” she muttered, colour rising in her cheeks.

 

It was crazy that she’d fed August in front of him a million times and yet they were still stuck on oblique references to her boobs somehow.

 

“How you feeling?” Bellamy asked Lexa over Clarke’s shoulder as she took August from him.

 

“Alive,” Lexa smiled tiredly, “and that is all I could hope for.”

 

Bellamy absentmindedly arranged the blanket he’d brought with him over Clarke as she sat down on the edge of the bed, facing away from Lexa.

 

“Your ambassadors strung up the kid who did it,” Bellamy said evenly, appearing to pass no judgement.

 

“How young?” Lexa asked, eyes solemn.

 

It was question Bellamy hadn’t been expecting. “Sixteen,” he responded with a harsh gulp. Still very much a child, no matter how good his aim was with a bow.

 

“It is done now,” Lexa rationalised. There was no point dwelling. Her ambassadors had made a choice while she lay dying, and she would not fault them, even if their unforgiving justice more resembled vengeance than anything else.

 

Bellamy wanted to dislike Lexa, and at times he did. He remembered her abandonment at Mount Weather, forcing Clarke into an impossible position, sacrificing him willing where he had helped free her people. He’d hated her for it for so long. But then he also knew, in truth, he would have made the same call. Lexa was the leader the grounders needed. One day things might be better, and Bellamy saw in her the ability to adapt and soften to that reality.

 

Clarke had many of the same qualities. It’s one of the reasons- Bellamy cut off that train of thought before it led him down a path he couldn’t untrack.

 

* * *

 

 

That night when Clarke laid August down to sleep, she watched Bellamy tentatively. After telling August a story, he hadn’t crawled under the furs as usual, but sat staring out at the night with a frown, the way he had before. He seemed so anxious these days.

 

“Hey.” She reached him, massaging one shoulder with her hand. It only seemed to make him more tense. “What’s wrong?”

 

“What are we doing here, Clarke?” Bellamy finally found the courage to ask. “What happens after?”

 

“After what?” Clarke let her hand fall from his shoulder.

 

“We can’t do this forever,” the words were like a bad taste on his tongue. He had to get rid of it, of them. “What about when we get home?”

 

“Home?” Clarked echoed.

 

“You move back into your mom’s room. I see August during the day, take him every other one? Do I take him a few nights a week when he’s older? What about when you meet someone? Do I get a say in that, since they’re going to be part of his life?”

 

“Bellamy, I hadn’t even thought-” Clarke began.

 

Bellamy interrupted, “We need to. I need to know if…” he rubbed his hands over his face roughly, voice growing more angry, more frustrated, “I can’t carry on not knowing what this is going to look like, Clarke. It’s already driving me half insane.”

 

“Hey.” Clarke was suddenly on the defensive. “Why didn’t you say anything before?” She took a step away.

 

“You are so frustrating,” he muttered. “I guess I never bothered because… deep down maybe I hoped…” The confession melted away as he drank in her expression of pure confusion. She didn’t feel like he did… that was obvious now. “This is a mess, Clarke. We’re acting like we’re together, but we’re not. This is all just a lie. I’ll lie for August, for as long as I have to. But this,” he motioned wildly, “this is a joke. There’s no one here to sell the story to. Just you and me. So can we drop the pretense?” Bellamy was breathing hard as he finished.

 

Clarke’s jaw was set, eyes glistening, backing slowly away she turned and slipped under the furs of the bed without a word.

 

Bellamy immediately felt horrible. She’d had the worst day and he’d just completely selfishly ruined it a little more, just to keep his honour, and his heart, intact. Seeing Clarke with Lexa today had made him realise he didn’t have her forever, just for now, and that wasn’t enough. But wouldn’t it hurt more to never have held her at all?

 

“Clarke. I’m sorry,” He whispered, perching next to her where she was curled up and turned away from him.

 

Silently, she shuddered, and kept shuddering. Shoulders tightly clenched.

 

The moment he placed a hand on her arm she let out a sob. Breaking out of the fetal position she turned over and sat so she could bury her face in his neck.

 

His arms encircled her instinctively. “I’m sorry,” Bellamy repeated.

 

“I’m sorry too, I…” she whispered into his  shoulder, “I never meant to make you feel replaceable. You aren’t.”

 

God she could read him like a book. Bellamy sighed deeply, drawing her in closer.

 

* * *

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000) 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raven told August that his parents are 'fucking idiots', but you probably figured that out from context right? Too bad Clarke and Bellamy are so damn oblivious.


	7. Bind, Bound, Binding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Months pass, alliances are born, and a secret comes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry. My excuse is 'life'.

Lexa hissed as Clarke wiped the wound clean with an alcohol soaked cloth. She had just removed the stitches but it would still be another week or two before Lexa was anywhere near back to normal. They were together in her rooms, with Lexa laid out on the bed she’d been stuck in for nearly two weeks now.

 

“Sorry,” Clarke said. “You’re healing fast but I need you to stay on bedrest another week.”

 

“The coalition needs its commander,” Lexa argued half-heartedly, her jaw clenching as Clarke applied a balm of lavender and yarrow. Not quite as painful as the alcohol, but not exactly pleasant either.

 

“Yes, they do need her; alive.” Clarke raised an eyebrow at Lexa, daring her to respond. “You think this alliance would last a week without you?” There was a long but comfortable silence as Clarke went back to work, finishing redressing the wound before Lexa spoke again.

 

“Clarke. The ambassadors are gone. You’re free to leave. You do know that?” Lexa looked up at Clarke with large, questioning eyes.

 

Clarke didn’t respond, lips parting as she considered the truth in Lexa’s words. Ultimately, Skaikru were waiting for her say so. They knew Clarke was treating Lexa, so Kane had indicated they would wait until Clarke was reassured that Lexa was healthy. Thing is, Lexa had been healing well for over a week, with no complications, and Nyko could have taken the stitches out. Clarke was the reason they were still here, but why? She didn’t even think she knew herself.

 

“You’re afraid to go?” Lexa asked softly.

 

“I’m not. I’m just… making sure you’re okay,” Clarke brushed the question off with a short huff.

 

“Is there... danger there?” Lexa persisted, appearing to be genuinely worried. “Dissent? Do you fear a coup?”

 

“No. Nothing like that,” Clarke said, adjusting the furs on Lexa’s bed, smoothing her hands over them as she avoided Lexa’s gaze.

 

Lexa regarded her knowingly, with eyes far too wise and full of understanding for one still so young. “Running doesn’t work, Clarke,” she offered solemnly.

 

“What do you think I’m running from?” Clarke asked, somewhat defensively.

 

“I don’t know.” Lexa refused to redirect her piercing gaze, voice lowering as she muttered the next, “I’m not sure you know either.”

 

“What I know, is that I’m not running from anything,” Clarke insisted. Staring Lexa down in defiance, she silently promised herself she’d be telling Skaikru to pack their things tonight, even if it was just to prove a point. If Lexa wanted her gone, then she’d go.

* * *

 

 

“Wanheda,” Roan strode up to Clarke as she finished packing up one of the saddlebags.

 

She immediately tensed. Despite his oath, Clarke still didn’t altogether trust him, and prefered not to have her back to him in any circumstances.

 

However, today he bowed his head respectfully, and wore a softer expression than she was used to seeing on him.

 

“Prince Roan. I thought you’d left already?”

 

“I had an engagement in the south after the binding. I’m passing through Polis on my return to Azgeda,” he explained.

 

Clarke nodded.

 

“Clarke, my mother wanted to speak with you before you leave.” Cullan approached, August in her arms.

 

“Allow two of my men to accompany you on your journey,” Roan said loudly, a little out of nowhere, startling both women.

 

“What?” Clarke said, somewhat sharply.

 

“I take my oaths very seriously, Wanheda.”

 

Clarke frowned, looking from Roan’s determined grimace to where August was watching the exchange with interest.

 

“Ride with us then,” Clarke said.

 

“I…” Roan looked taken aback.

 

“You said you’re blood bound to August. Prove it,” she challenged. “Ride with us and keep him safe. You have to pass through Skaikru land on your way to Azgeda anyway.”

 

Roan looked between Clarke, Cullan, and August. He seemed to grow smaller under their constant gazes. After a long moment, he nodded stiffly.

 

Clarke turned to march toward the rover, intending to speak to Kane. Finding Bellamy in her path, she moved to march past him, knowing he would have nothing good to say about this arrangement.

 

“What is Prince Roan doing here?” Bellamy hissed under his breath as he sidled up to her.

 

“He’s coming with us,” Clarke said shortly.

 

* * *

 

The journey back home took over a week, with the rover needed for transporting the guard, supplies were loaded in a rickety cart they had a couple of the horses dragging. The more people, the more accomodations needed, though the Azgeda seemed to be a fair bit less fussy than Skaikru. Roan’s party kept to themselves mostly, but the longer the journey dragged on, the friendlier they became… marginally at least. It didn’t help that August was only getting more active. When they’d come to Polis, nearing two months ago, he’d slept most of the time, but now he was desperate to engage with the world; pulling Clarke’s hair, babbling non-stop, wriggling and crying to be put on the ground. In particular, his new favourite thing was blowing raspberries, and then laughing to himself about them. As adorable as Clarke found all those things as a mother, as a leader she knew his needs and demands had added almost a full day onto their journey.

 

“We should stop now, Clarke,” Kane yelled from where he leant out the rover’s passenger window. “It’s getting too dark to navigate.”

 

“We’re only an hour or two away. It doesn’t make any sense to stop now,” she called back, suddenly feeling incredibly desperate to get home.

 

Bellamy shared a dire look with Kane, then urged his horse forward to sidle up to hers, lowering his voice, “Clarke, we’re all tired, August’s tired,” he nodded to where the boy was limp at her front, eyes half closed, “all our friends will be asleep when we get back anyway.”

 

Clarke sighed, reluctant to listen.

 

“Better we get a good amount of sleep, arrive early tomorrow, join everyone for breakfast. What’s one more night on a forest floor anyway?” Bellamy’s dark eyes were soft and shining; the one part of him she could make out without issue in the dappled moonlight.

 

“Okay,” Clarke conceded. She desperately wanted to be home. She wanted a comfortable bed, and for August to sleep in his own crib. To have walls around them that they didn’t share with potential enemies. But, then again, being home came with a cost, and that was Bellamy; they hadn’t slept apart in two months, so what happened when they got home? Did they go back to how things were before? Bellamy had voiced some entirely valid concerns over his place in August’s life. She didn’t want to just ignore them, but she was running out of time to address them.

 

Clarke fed August as she watched Bellamy and Miller build the fire, the others moving about them unloading sleeping bags and the furs gifted to them by Lexa. Her eyes were trained on Bellamy’s back as he crouched to adjust the logs. She wondered how she was going to get all of them out of this in one piece. She knew Bellamy wanted to be there for August, as much as possible, but it wasn’t like they could co-habit forever? Eventually Bellamy would want to be in a relationship, right? He wasn’t exactly celibate, though she had to admit he’d been a lot more discreet since she’d returned with August, which Clarke was silently very grateful for. Their situation drew enough attention without everyone seeing him carrying on with other girls while she was wandering around camp with his supposed offspring strapped to her front. This whole thing was a mess in general, and the more people involved the messier it would get.

 

“Do Skaikru have chosen marks?” Roan plopped himself down right beside her.

 

She suffocated the desire to shuffle away from him. “Uh… no.”

 

“Then how do you know who is taken, and who is not?”

 

“You ask them.” Clarke arranged the blanket over August and herself, feeling exposed, but mostly by the line of questioning more than anything.

 

“That seems very complex,” Roan frowned, resting an arm on his knee as he sat with one leg outstretched.

 

“Sometimes we wear rings,” Clarke said.

 

“Rings?”

 

“On this finger,” Clarke touched her thumb to the tip of her left ring finger, “but only if you’re married.”

 

“We do not marry. We bind, much as you did; you bound yourself to the coalition, as we bind ourselves to one another, and I am bound to your son. To break a binding vow… is a dire thing.”  

 

Roan seemed contemplative. It wasn’t a trait Clarke had seen in him before. “You don’t wear a ring,” it was a statement.

 

“That’s because I’m not married,” Clarke answered impatiently, wishing again Roan would go away. She didn’t really want to get up while August was still feeding, and this had been her spot first.

 

Roan didn’t look at her. He was too busy regarding Bellamy carefully. “You and August’s father are-”

 

“None of your business,” Clarke cut him off, huffing in annoyance.

 

“I didn’t mean to offend, Wanheda.”

 

“Clarke,” she insisted. “Clarke is fine.”

 

“Clarke,” Roan smiled, “I’m sorry if I offended you, and I’m sorry for drawing blood. I know an apology cannot retribute, but I mean to repay my debt.”

 

He seemed sincere in his apology, and so Clarke sent him an understanding nod. “I know. You hold an oath to my son now. I want us to be allies, if not friends. So…” Clarke paused, knowing Bellamy would hate this, “would you attend August’s naming? We plan to hold on in a couple of months, when the commander can attend.”

 

For a brief moment Roan looked touched by the invitation. “It would be an honour.”

 

* * *

 

“Can’t sleep?” Bellamy groaned as he crumpled onto the ground beside her, using the same fallen tree to prop himself up as she was. He was still a bit sore from riding all day and squirmed until he found the most comfortable position.

 

“Not me. August.” Clarke sighed, moving her gaze from the gently crackling fire to where August was dozing in her arms. “He only just fell asleep.”

 

“I can take him if you want to-”

 

“I’m good.”

 

“Okay.”

 

They sat in silence for a few moments, feeling the tension build. “I want you to see him as much as you want to, Bellamy,” Clarke thought it was time they finally talked about this, before they got home and it became a necessity to confront it.

 

“Clarke, I want to see him all the time. I don’t want to miss anything.”

 

Clarke sighed deeply. She felt the same.

 

“Are you really okay?” Bellamy asked.

 

Clarke shrugged. “I guess, somehow, being so close is making me even more homesick.”

 

“I get it,” Bellamy said softly. “It’s been two months now. That’s a long time.”

 

“Seven months is longer,” Clarke said. Her tone was light hearted, but her voice cracked a little.

 

Bellamy didn’t know what to say to that, swallowing roughly, eyes pricking at the memory of what life had been like without her. Especially in the later months, when everyone had insisted she was dead. God… he should have followed her that day, watched over her.

 

She turned to meet his gaze, wet eyes reflecting the light of the fire perfectly.

 

“I missed you, a lot. I don’t know if, well... I know I never told you that before. There were so many times I thought about going after you, but I…” Bellamy trailed off.

 

“I missed you too.” Clarke studied his features, an intensely guilty expression on her face.

 

“I need you, Clarke. I mean, we all do, but…” Bellamy’s jaw quivered as he gathered the courage to say what he felt, “I _really_ need you. And August.”

 

Clarke drew in a breath between her teeth, watching Bellamy intently as he leant in a little closer, arm draping over the length of the tree.

 

“You’re my family. And now Octavia’s leaving again.” Bellamy chewed his lip, eyes glistening. Seeing Clarke with Lexa made him consider, even for a moment, that maybe Clarke would want to stay in Polis. He knew it was silly, Clarke wouldn’t do that to August, but the thought had terrified Bellamy.

 

“I know,” Clarke’s voice was soft and uncertain, “but someday you’ll have another family, Bellamy. You’ll find someone great and have a whole bunch of kids that are yours. I want that for you, okay? I really do. I don’t want to stand in the way of that.”

 

Bellamy was both horrified and entranced by her words. Did she really think he didn’t think of August as his? He was offended, and yet he knew this was just Clarke trying to be thoughtful, trying show that she cared, in her own messed up way.

 

“August is mine, Clarke.” He couldn’t believe what she’d just implied. “God, do… do you feel like if you had more kids they’d be more ‘yours’ than August is?” Bellamy said gruffly, shoulders tensed.

 

“What? No. No, of course not. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-” She stopped and took a breath. “I just don’t want you to feel trapped. After all, we’re not...” Clarke faltered, bottom lip trembling slightly. What were they? She searched his eyes, dark and bright, intense, some terrible decision raging like a fire behind them.

 

“We’re not...?” He urged her to continue.

 

She didn’t.

 

He leant slowly closer, as if testing the waters to see if she would pull away.

 

She didn’t.

 

They were both crying when their lips met. It wasn’t perfect; it was wet, with teeth clashing. His damp eyelashes sweeping over her cheek as he drew her bottom lip desperately between his own. Hearts thundering and aching in their rib cages. It felt right, it really did, but at the same time she was fighting a part of herself; the part of herself that remembered actions had consequences. She wanted to grip his shirt and pull him into her, but then August shifted against her chest, and she remembered the biggest reason this couldn’t happen.

 

When Bellamy went to push further, knuckles stroking over her cheekbone, Clarke gathered the strength to push back against his chest with her free hand, drawing herself away. She looked up at him with both wonder and an uneasiness, tears tumbling down her already stained cheeks. Was it already too late? Had they ruined this?

 

Bellamy pulled sharply back, apologetically muttering, “Clarke…”

 

“This can’t happen.” Clarke blinked a few more tears loose.

 

“I know. I’m sorry,” Bellamy said.

 

Clarke pursed her lips tight before speaking again. “It’s just better for him if we don’t,” she managed to get out.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Bellamy pulled away, wiping a tear from the end of his freckled nose. Nodding, he stood and hovered awkwardly a moment. “I’m gonna try to get some sleep.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke tried not to let herself think about it. As the weeks moved on she became much more careful of how she treated Bellamy, questioning all physical contact, asking herself to justify it. Kissing of any kind was out, so was hand holding, and hugging should be kept to a minimum. She reasoned that they’d only kissed because they’d got far too comfortable in their roles as August’s parents; sharing both a bed and a child had confused their feelings. Bellamy didn’t really want to be with her. And even if she had wanted to be with Bellamy, she always knew she couldn’t. Even if it weren’t for August, Bellamy was still her best friend. She wasn’t going to risk that relationship over what was probably just amounted to a crush.

 

When she’d admitted what had happened to Raven, Raven had snorted and called it denial. At that point, Clarke had taken August back and sent Raven the middle finger as she left. Who cared what Raven thought? Clarke knew she’d made the right choice.

 

A week after they got back, she and August ended up moving into Bellamy’s cabin, and Bellamy applied for a room on the Ark. Clarke fought him on it initially, but it made sense; they needed the space, the cabin was sitting practically empty, and she couldn’t stay with her mom forever.

 

“I was thinking treehouses,” Bellamy said a little over a month later.

 

“What?” Clarke had looked up from trying to tug a sock onto August’s foot as the baby wriggled and complained.

 

“Cabins are fine nearer Arkadia but the river flooded over the winter. We can’t build down there unless there’s some sort of flood defence. We’d have to clear the trees to build, so why not use them?” He was thinking aloud more than anything, frowning down at a map of Skaikru’s territory.

 

“And you got to ‘treehouses’ from that?”

 

Bellamy raised his gaze to hers and shrugged. “It’s an idea. We are ‘Skaikru’ after all.”

 

“Okay.” Clarke smiled, still totally unconvinced.

 

“What do you think, August, hm? You like Daddy’s treehouse idea, right?” Bellamy’s eyes lit up he kneeled in front of where Clarke was sat so he was eye level with August.

 

August reached out a pair of chubby hands to grasp at Bellamy’s beard. “Dada,” he garbled unceremoniously.

 

Clarke and Bellamy froze, mouths falling open, they quickly met each other’s eyes.

 

“Did he just say...?” Bellamy began to ask.

 

Clarke nodded slowly.

 

Bellamy blinked, struggling to feel anything but shock. “Isn’t he too young?”

 

“I don’t know… he’s nearly seven months. It’s not unheard of,” Clarke managed. She’d noticed August’s babbling becoming more consistent, the occasional ‘ba’ or ‘da’, so this wasn’t impossible.

 

“Dada!” August said more insistently this time.

 

This time Bellamy did start to tear up, grasping August under the arms, he stood to bounce him on his hip. “That’s right, Buddy,” he said softly. Smiling gently, he ran a hand over August’s curls, kissing his forehead.

 

Clarke watched them contentedly, feeling none of the jealousy she thought she might feel if and when August said ‘Dada’ first. She was sure it would be her turn soon enough. It wasn’t like August would never say Mama. Instead, all Clarke could think about was how scared she’d been when she’d thought she would be raising August alone. When she’d arrived back to Arkadia with him, watching her mother consider both of them with a kind of despair, Clarke had been sure she’d never have this. She hadn’t thought August would ever have a Dad, let alone one that was as amazing with him as Bellamy.

 

“Sorry, Clarke,” Bellamy said, though he was struggling not to grin.

 

“I don’t mind,” Clarke admitted softly, her own blue eyes glittering with pride as she met his. She stood, coming close to stroke August’s cheek, lifting his little chin with a finger so she could meet his eyes, “but if your next word is anything other than ‘Mama’ you will really hurt my feelings, okay? Remember I’m the one with the food.”

 

Bellamy burst out laughing.

 

* * *

 

“You are not cutting my baby’s hair,” Clarke said fiercely, teeth gritted.

 

Bellamy and Raven cowered behind Raven’s latest project. Bellamy was silently passed Raven her tools while he waited for Abby and Clarke to finish their argument.

 

“Clarke, he can barely see!” Abby advanced, medical scissors in hand.

 

Clarke looked down at where August was blinking up at her. His dark brown eyes were hidden behind rogue curls. With her free hand, she reached over and pushed his hair back so his vision was unobscured once more. Looking back to her mother, she raised an eyebrow pointedly.

 

“Clarke it’s past his ears now. It gets any longer he’s going to have to start tying it back,” Abby said gruffly.

 

“Then I guess I better start looking for some ties or something,” Clarke responded curtly.

 

“Bellamy?” Abby looked to him and gestured with exasperation to Clarke.

 

Was she seriously asking him to take her side against Clarke? That was new. Raven saw the obvious humour in the situation and snorted a laugh.

 

Clarke and Abby both stared at Bellamy as his gaze moved between the two. “I think he looks fine.”

 

Clarke smiled smugly. Looking back to her mom, she adjusted August on her hip.

 

Abby rolled her eyes. “Fine. You’re his Mom. But when he’s older and wants to know why you let him walk around looking like that, I won’t defend you.”

 

Raven smirked. “Bellamy will.”

 

Bellamy sighed, sending Raven an unimpressed look. He moved out from behind Raven’s workbench and reached out to ruffle August’s curly mop, “Your hair is your thing, isn’t it?”

 

August garbled out, “Dada,” mixed in with a few other sounds.

 

Bellamy smiled and took him from Clarke, bringing him close so he could kiss him on the nose. “Well he is technically a grounder, he could look a bit like one,” Bellamy joked. “Octavia can teach him to braid it or something.”

 

* * *

 

“Come on, Baby,” Clarke encouraged, guiding the oatmeal-adjacent concoction toward August’s mouth. “You’ll like it. I promise.”

 

August fussed, screwing up his face and turning away, burying his face in her collarbone. There was a spate of short sniggers around her as her friends watched.

 

Clarke groaned in frustration and dropped the spoon back in the bowl.

 

“Here,” Bellamy offered, taking August from her.

 

“He say any new words yet?” Raven asked, absentmindedly pushing the berries in her own breakfast about with her spoon.

 

“No.” Clarke sighed.

 

Bellamy lifted August so they were face to face and started annunciating, “Ma-ma. Ma-ma. Ma-ma?”

 

August gurgled, clapping his hands together in excitement.

 

Clarke grinned, leaning in grab his hands and help him clap them together some more.

 

Jasper held his hand to his chest. “Suddenly I’m seeing him as a brooding, 6’2” heartbreaker, striding around camp with a braid down to his waist.”

 

Monty rolled his eyes, wondering why Jasper always felt the need to poke the bear, and shared a withering look with Harper.

 

“My son will not ‘stride’.” Bellamy frowned.

 

“That’s really what you disliked most about that sentence?” Raven said, nose wrinkled.

 

“If he’s anything like either of his parents, _all_ he’ll be doing is striding,” Jasper argued, shoving a spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth.

 

Bellamy ignored Jasper’s remark and focused his attention on August. “Come on, little man, just one ‘Mama’.”

 

“Dada,” August decided, drooling a little. “Ba ba da,” he continued, descending into garbled sounds.

 

Clarke and Bellamy sighed simultaneously.

 

“He’ll get there soon. It’s honestly pretty great he can even manage Dada,” Clarke rationalised. “Though I’m not sure he even knows what he’s saying. He just knows we like it.”

 

Bellamy held August up and kissed the tiny fist he was waving in his face. “No, you know I’m Dada, don’t you, little man?”

 

“Careful there ‘Dada’ you have admirers,” Raven said, giving him a knowing look and jerking her head to the right.

 

Glancing down the long table Bellamy and Clarke saw a number of the women from Hydra station gazing at where Bellamy was holding August. Quickly, they realised they were being watched back, and buried their noses in their breakfasts.

 

Jasper let out a low whistle as he turned back to the group. “I need to get myself a baby.”

 

Bellamy clenched his jaw, and chanced a glance at Clarke. Her face betrayed very little, but she seemed to be concentrating just a little too hard on the spoon in her hand.

 

* * *

 

“Now that he’s starting solid food you could start weaning him a bit? Does he still feed at night?” Abby said as she checked August over in the med bay’s small, enclosed consulting room, pulling his toes apart to see how well the scars were fading. She stroked a hand over August’s round little belly as he lay there, clad only in his diaper.

 

August, however, was too busy gnawing eagerly at his fist to take much notice of any of this.

 

“No, not anymore. And I know I should be feeding him less, I just…” Clarke trailed off. She liked having that time with August. He needed her, and she liked that. As soon as he was weaned he wouldn’t really need her anymore, not in the same way.

 

Abby looked up at Clarke as she wiped the drool off August’s hand and gave him a clean, wet cloth chew on instead. “Did you know I had to go back to work when you were three months old?”

 

“No,” Clarke said.

 

“Hardest thing I ever had to do; I cried for a solid hour after leaving you. I think maybe I was scared you thought I’d abandoned you, that you would miss me.”

 

Clarke looked up from stroking a hand over August’s forehead, listening carefully.

 

“Or, then again, maybe I was scared that you wouldn’t,” Abby added, occupying her hands with folding bandages.

 

“Mom…”

 

Abby blinked away a tear. She scooped August up off the table and kissed his cheek. “Well, he looks great. He’s putting on all the weight, and it looks like his teeth are about to come through. I’ll give you some cloth you can sterilize for him to chew on. Just watch out for anything he could try to put in his mouth that might be dirty or that he could choke on.”

 

“So, everything, pretty much.” Clarke reached out to wrestle August’s shirt and pants back on his squirming body. He burst out into tears when her attempts to redress him caused her to have to take the cloth out his mouth. “I know. I know. Hold on, baby.”

 

“Don’t panic if he eats some grass or something though. He’s managed to ward off any real illnesses so far. Babies are generally sturdier than people think.”

 

“Please could you tell Bellamy that? Last week some poor recruit sneezed opposite August and he made them do a whole bunch of extra reps.” Clarke finished dressing August and stuck the cloth back in his mouth, immediately quieting him. Taking him off her mother, Clarke sat down heavily in one of the chairs she’d pulled up to the table.

 

“Well, there are worse things than being protective.” Having seen how Bellamy had stepped up to be a father to August, Abby’s attitude toward the young man had softened considerably. She still seemed to find him an annoyance sometimes, but he wasn’t the hothead chancellor shooter now, so much as the hothead father of her grandson, which was a much more favourable position to be in. “As for the teething; Raven’s been working on a converting one of the bunks into a freezer. If she gets that up and running soon you could rub ice on his gums when it gets really bad. Unfortunately, we don’t really have any medication for this sort of thing.”

 

“I’ll ask Lincoln if the grounders use anything for it.” Clarke rubbed August’s back as he relaxed against her shoulder. “There’s so many things to worry about now. He starting to talk, and teethe, and eat proper food, and Bellamy swears that two days ago he almost crawled. It all feels too soon.”

 

Abby laughed. “Get used to that.” Her eyes were shining as took the chair beside Clarke, she reached out held her daughter’s chin gently. “You think I don’t have to take a minute every time I remember you have a child of your own now? I’m always only going to see the little girl we had stop from finger painting her bedroom wall with trees and rainbows every night for two months.”

 

Clarke blushed, smiling as she shook her head; it had always been one of her dad’s favourite stories. She’d asked once why he never just took the paints away from her, and he’d just said that he hadn’t wanted to make her cry; a clean wall hadn’t been worth that. He’d said she’d understand one day, when she had her own kid, and now she did.

 

“Honestly, Clarke, I had you when I was only a couple of years older than you are now, and even though it was planned, I was so scared. I felt like everything I did was wrong. But… you’ve handled this so well. I’m so proud, and Bellamy is… well, I’m glad you have him.”

 

“So am I,” Clarke murmured, distractedly playing with August’s fingers where they rested at her collarbone. She figured if she kept them occupied they were less likely to end up in her hair.

 

“I just need to say this.” Abby took Clarke’s free hand in both of hers. “When you first came back, and you were asleep with August in the crib next to you, I remember being so scared that August was fatherless. The timings seemed to match up for-”

 

Clarke cut her off with a sharp breath, wincing, she looked up at the ceiling, “of course.” Abby had briefly thought August was Finn’s.

 

“Then there was a day, maybe four days after you came back. I was coming to change your IV and I found Bellamy sat on the edge of your bed, holding your hand, with August in his arms. Something just… clicked. I think partly because he was talking to August in this voice, and it reminded me so much of your dad. He was always better at the bedtime story thing than me.” Abby swallowed roughly, looking at her feet. “You know I haven’t had the highest opinion of Bellamy in the past, but I was wrong. So, I hope my opinion of him isn’t a factor in what’s keeping you two apart.”

 

“Keeping us apart?” Clarke’s eyes narrowed. She really didn’t want to get into the whole Bellamy thing with her mom. “No, Mom. No.”

 

“Okay.” Abby patted Clarke’s hand, looking very uncomfortable. She focused on where August was staring at her from Clarke’s shoulder. “He really does take after him. His hair is getting even darker. Freckles don’t usually appear till about two years, but I think he’ll get them too eventually.”

 

Clarke groaned softly. She closed her eyes and pressed her face into August’s hair. Her Mom not knowing the truth had been eating away at her since she’d returned from Polis, and this just made it worse. Even white lies grew heavy on your conscience after a while. Her mom had just been so very open with her, possibly more open than ever, and yet this huge secret sat between them. Clarke just couldn’t lie anymore. What if she had another kid one day? If not before, her mom would definitely find out then. Clarke had been thinking about it, and she knew it would only become harder to explain the longer the lie lingered.

 

“Clarke?”

 

“Mom, I have to tell you something,” Clarke’s voice was muffled as she kept her face buried in August’s curls.

 

Abby stared at Clarke intently, brow furrowed. She could hear the discomfort in her daughter’s voice, obvious and a little pained. She waited, not sure what to expect.

 

Clarke lifted her head. “August… he’s not technically Bellamy’s.”

 

Abby’s lips parted, “Clarke, God...”

 

“Oh, no, no, that’s not, I mean,” Clarke gulped, she couldn’t even look her mom in the eye, “it’s more like August isn’t ours, except, of course he is. I don’t know how to…” taking a breath, she gripped her son’s little hand, “August isn’t ours, biologically.” Clarke forced herself to look Abby in the eye, finally, and immediately felt like she was going to throw up a little, with acid burning in the back of her throat. The look Abby was giving her was this horrible mix of confusion and betrayal.

 

“What?” Abby breathed out.

 

“He was so tiny, and alone. He would have died. I just, I couldn’t leave him there, Mom. I always planned to find a family for him, but it’s like, I don’t know, maybe it’s just because he needed me so badly and after everything, I needed someone to need me. But, he’s mine now… ours. I need you to try to understand why I didn’t tell you. I was trying to keep him safe, and I thought you would make me give him up.” Clarke was shaking a little as she finished.

 

Abby was staring at August with an unreadable expression, lips pressed tight together. “Right,” she said, voice cracking.

 

Clarke waited an eternity for her mom to say something, anything else.

 

“I need a moment to... think, maybe. I should...” Abby seemed distant as she rose. “I, um…” she trailed off. Unable to look Clarke in the eye, she squeezed her eyes shut, as if to ward of an unwanted thought, and then reached for the door. Opening it, she said nothing more, the cold draft she left in her wake washing over Clarke and August.

 

Clarke swallowed a sob, vision blurring, she slid further into the chair, holding August closer.

 

* * *

 

Clarke was crying in her cabin when Bellamy walked in. She didn’t hear him knock, maybe if she had, she would have told him to go away. But she didn’t hear him open the door, or cross the floor either. Maybe on some level she’d wanted him there, because something had stopped her from locking the door in first place. She was crying almost silently, curled up on the bed around a sleeping August, who was splayed out like a starfish in the middle of the furs.

 

“Clarke,” he whispered. A large, warm hand landed on her arm, and the bed dipped as he settled behind her.

 

Blinking rapidly, she turned quickly to face him. It was too late to hide what she’d been doing.

 

“Hey,” he said, concerned eyes flicking over her as if checking her for injuries.

 

In a single beat she found herself suddenly wrapped up in his arms, curled up in a ball on his lap, her head under his chin, with tears starting to stream down her cheeks all over again. He rubbed a hand up and down her back, and she felt the unspoken question on his lips as they brushed against her forehead.

 

“I told my mom. I told her about August,” Clarke whispered.

 

“Was she angry?” Clarke could hear him getting a little riled up himself.

 

“No, she was just... cold.” Clarke shrugged weakly, and felt Bellamy relax a little.

 

“She was probably just shocked, Clarke. She loves August,” Bellamy reminded her.

 

“I never meant to hurt her.” Freeing her arms, she wrapped them around his neck so she could hold him back, one leg bent, almost curled around him. These past couple of months depriving herself of this had taken a toll. She realised just how much she’d missed being near him.

 

After a moment, he pulled her closer again, bringing his lips to the crook of her neck and kissing the skin there. He trailed fingers up and down her spine, like he did with August sometimes when he was trying to get him to stop crying.

 

Clarke shivered a little at the sensation. Somehow this was more intimate than their kiss, not desperate this time, but entirely gentle. Not so much needing, as wanting. “I missed you,” Clarke admitted. She still missed him somehow. She was so close to him, and yet it was like some invisible skin existed between them, keeping them always just a millimeter too far apart.

 

“I missed you too,” Bellamy murmured. After a moment he pulled away and went to remove August from the center of the bed.

 

Clarke remembered it was Bellamy’s night to take him, and almost felt like breaking out into sobs again at the thought of being left alone.

 

Instead of leaving like she’d expected, Bellamy placed August into his crib, and tucked him in. Coming back to Clarke, he sat down where he’d been before, and using both thumbs he collected the tears on her cheeks and smiled. “You should probably get some sleep, Princess.”

 

Clarke reached up to take one of the hands resting on her cheeks. A silent plea.

 

“I’ll stay. I’ll get up with August if he needs it.”

 

“Thank you.” Eyelids heavy, she allowed herself to lie down, and rolled over. Bellamy kicked off his shoes, and she heard the thuds as they hit the floor. Then she felt his warmth fill the space behind her; he pulled her into his chest, and grabbed a blanket to pull over them.

 

“Tomorrow, we’ll fix it,” he promised.

 

* * *

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000)

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	8. Contingency Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With winter in full swing, Arkadia hosts a naming ceremony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the dropping of the season 6 trailer - she rises.

‘Who’s that baby?’ Clarke whispered to August as she stood in her mother’s bunk, balancing him on her hip in front of the mirror.

 

August was entranced, gazing intently at his reflection as he nibbled on a few of his fingers.

 

‘Who’s that?’ Clarke repeated, pointing at August’s image in the mirror.

 

‘Ahh!’ August cried, copying Clarke and pointing at the mirror as if in realisation.

 

‘Is that you? Yeah?’ Clarke smiled and pressed a kiss to August’s forehead.

 

The little boy leant away from her to reach toward her image in the mirror. ‘Mama.’

 

‘Yeah, that’s me. Can you say ‘August’?’ Clarke tried to get his attention, brushing his curls out his eyes with her free hand.

 

August turned his head, recognising his name.

 

There was a click and squeak as Abby entered, shutting the door behind her. ‘Oh, Hey.’

 

‘Ey!’ August mimicked and kicked in excitement, happy to see his grandmother.

 

Abby walked over to them. ‘Hey, little one.’ She turned her attention to Clarke. ‘Has he managed any new words?’

 

‘He’s been trying on ‘food’ and ‘pony’ for size, but they’re not coming out quite right,’ Clarke said.

 

‘You’re such a smart boy,’ Abby told him, beaming. ‘Still no interest in crawling?’

 

Clarke shrugged. ‘Not really. He can shuffle pretty fast though. Bellamy says last Wednesday he noticed him rocking on all fours like he was thinking about it, but I haven’t seen anything.’

 

Abby smiled at the little boy, tapping the end of his nose gently. ‘You’re doing just fine for now.’

 

‘How was clinic?’ Clarke asked. August was pulling away to grab for Abby, and so Clarke let him go to her.

 

‘Okay.’ Abby said, bringing her attention down to focus on August as she gave him a cuddle. She smiled, taking his hand in one finger and kissing his fist. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary particularly. A few cuts and scrapes. Took two implants out.’

 

‘Just today? Four women had them taken out last week?’ Clarke was used to strict population control, so seeing her mother talk so casually about multiple implant removals was something fairly new.

 

‘Mainly just the ones that are going out of date anyway. We can’t make more, or store the ones we do have properly here. Things have been going well for us, Clarke. Couples see the children we do have doing well.’ Abby rubbed a hand up and down August’s back. ‘You should brush up on your midwifery, I think in a year from now, we’re going to be needing it. ’

 

‘Anyone I know?’ Clarke pried.

 

Abby knew exactly what she was asking. ‘Not that I would tell you if they had, but no, none of the girls from the dropship have asked.’

 

Clarke nodded, crossing her arms tightly in front of her and rocking on her heels.

 

Abby cocked her head at Clarke. ‘Somehow I don’t believe you came here to ask me how my morning was.’

 

‘I just wanted to speak to you before August’s naming,’ Clarke said, ‘about, well… I think you know what about.’

 

‘Clarke,’ Abby sighed. ‘Do we need bring all this up again?’

 

‘Yes,’ Clarke insisted, ‘because we didn’t really ever talk about it, and I want you to know, being… August’s mom, it wasn’t an impulse decision. It happened slowly... and I did the best I could with it.’

 

Abby reached out and gripped Clarke’s shoulder with one hand. ‘You are my daughter. He’s my grandson. That’s all I really need to know. I might have questions about why you waited so long to tell me the truth, but nothing’s changed.’

 

‘I just need you to know that it wasn’t that I didn’t trust you, I just… I didn’t have the energy to explain, and then, I don’t know. Most of the time it didn’t feel like I was telling a lie.’

 

For the first week after Clarke had told Abby, they hadn’t spoken about it, but then Abby had approached her to ask some questions. She’d asked a lot of them, and then she’d asked one that had made Clarke’s blood boil. Abby had asked if Clarke had considered it would have been better for August if she had given him up. All Clarke could think after that was, did her mother not think she’d considered that? Did she think Clarke had chosen to raise August on a whim? Clarke had even told her when she'd confessed that she had been worried early on that her mom would make her give him up if she knew, but Abby had, fairly insensitively, asked her that question anyway.

Clarke had avoided her mom for almost two weeks, before Bellamy had pointed out she was being entirely irrational. After a few hours of being annoyed at Bellamy too, she’d slowly come to her senses and gone to make peace with her mom. It had consisted of little more than an ‘I’m sorry’, but Abby had responded in kind, profusely, and it had been more than enough for most of the tension to dissipate… just not all of it. Clarke often felt they would never completely see eye to eye.

 

‘I never meant to imply that you and Bellamy aren’t amazing parents. You are.’ Abby beant down to lower August to the floor. He’d been wriggling in her arms, eager to go explore.

 

‘It’s okay.’

 

Abby drew back up and placed a hand gently on each of Clarke’s cheeks and stroked her thumbs over her cheekbones. ‘I am so proud of you.’

 

Clarke felt a wave of warmth wash over her. After everything, her mom telling her she was proud of her still felt like the highest praise in the world.

 

‘And, Clarke.’ Abby’s hands fell from her face to rest on her upper arms. ‘You did hear me when I said a lot of the implants are going out of date, right?’

 

Clarke nodded slowly.

 

‘We’re looking for alternatives; asking the grounders what remedies they use, but uh… in the meantime you need to be careful, okay. Your new implant wasn’t stored perfectly, there's a small possibility it could be defective, and we still need to wait a few months before I can run some blood tests to see.’ Abby smiled tightly, then moved away to where August had managed to shuffle on his bottom and was determinedly trying to tug one of the draws under the bed out.

 

Clarke was blushing ferociously as she spun round to address Abby. ‘Mom, we’re-’

 

‘I know, baby, just please promise me. You and Bellamy don’t want two children under the age of two.’

 

Clarke stifled a groan of embarrassment, and decided to just escape rather than attempt to correct Abby’s assumptions about her love life. ‘I should go. Lexa will be arriving soon.’ Not exactly true, they had no idea when exactly the commander would arrive, but Clarke’s brain was too addled to find a better excuse.

 

Her mom really didn’t need to worry. Clarke had only ever been with Finn, a long, long time ago now, and she and Bellamy were, very decidedly, not a thing. It had been her decision, and she was sticking by it. Going beyond that, if she wanted to be seeing someone else other than Bellamy, who was there? Everyone north of Polis saw her as ‘taken’. She wondered if Bellamy had the same issue; she hadn’t seen him with anyone the whole time they’d been at Arkadia, before or after visiting Polis. She quickly banished all thoughts of Bellamy secretly rendezvousing with women to the back of her mind, feeling increasingly uncomfortable the more she thought about it. Either way, the point was, Clarke was in absolutely no danger.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bellamy had August bundled up against the cold weather and strapped firmly to his chest, facing outways, as he did his shift in the stables; which were really little more than a series of crude huts gathered on the edge of the campsite. It was usually this or a shift in the armoury cleaning the guns. Bellamy would take horses over guns any day, despite the smell. When it was the horses he felt like he could bring August along. None of them were aggressive, and at the very least August was safe with Selene, who was easily the calmest animal Bellamy had ever encountered.

 

Bellamy was busy brushing her down today, which he did fairly often; he felt like her white coat needed the extra care, and there was also the fact it felt like a way to share his gratitude. This horse had brought Clarke and August home. There was a chance now that Gelma and Cullan had arrived in for the naming they would want to take Selene back with them, and Bellamy wanted to be sure that if they did it would be clear to them Selene had been well cared for.

 

August babbled and kicked his legs the way he always did when he was excited.

 

‘Yeah, she looks pretty, right?’ Bellamy made sure to keep speaking to August as he brushed Selene, he was going through a stage where when he got bored he could throw a tantrum that could last hours. ‘You’re getting a wash later too, you know? Mommy is getting the dirt out from under those little finger nails if it kills her. Trust me,’ Bellamy muttered.

 

August giggled, trying to lean his head back far enough to look at Bellamy’s face.

 

‘You have no idea what I’m saying, do you?’ Bellamy paused, then bent his head to give his son’s eyebrow a peck. His cheeks were bright pink from a fair mix of both the frosty air and the fact he was teething. ‘You’re very cute though.’

 

‘I know what you’re saying,’ Octavia’s voice came from a short distance away.

 

Bellamy jumped a little, huffing out a breath in relief as he turned around. ‘O. You scared the hell out of me.’

 

‘Careful, now. No swearing in front of the kid,’ Octavia warned with a smile, sauntering up with her shoulders squared. She looked a little mussed from the long ride, but happy and healthy, which Bellamy was glad for. She seemed to have come into herself, being a member of Trikru.

 

‘When did you get here?’

 

‘Just an hour ago. Lincoln took a fall on the ride so I got the horses settled then went to see him in the med bay,’ Octavia explained.

 

‘He okay?’ Bellamy frowned. ‘A fall’ could be meant he stumbled or that he fell halfway down a cliff, but he was guessing from Octavia’s expression it was more likely the former.

 

‘Yeah, just slipped on black ice. He dislocated his shoulder; he’s had worse.’ Octavia held out her hands, smiling. ‘Now… could I please give my nephew a cuddle?’

 

Bellamy laughed, unwinding August from his makeshift holster, he caught him in the crook of his arm, and held him out to Octavia.

 

‘Nice outfit,’ she laughed, admiring the puffy, black one-piece that had been fashioned for August out of an old coat. It looked a little silly, but Harper had argued it would keep him warm, and he was cute enough to pull it off.

 

‘Harper’s a genius,’ Bellamy said.

 

‘Hello little one, how are you? Wow, his hair got so long.’ Octavia bounced the smiling baby, brushing a hand over his soft, fine curls.

 

‘Clarke almost bit Abby’s hand off when she tried to cut it.’ Bellamy unwrapped the rest of the cloth he’d been using to holster August and went to start on Selene’s mane, using his fingers to loosen the knots.

 

‘I think his eyes have gotten darker too.’ Octavia sighed. ‘Kind of feel bad for Clarke; he’s all you, Bell.’

 

‘I don’t think she minds.’ In fact, Clarke had told him so. She had babbled on about how actually brown eyes and hair are dominant so if he were theirs biologically it would make sense anyway. Bellamy hadn’t been paying as much attention as he should have been, just watching the expressions on her face, but she’d sounded very smart saying it.

 

‘I always kinda wished I had dark brown eyes like this,’ Octavia said softly, gazing lovingly at August. Running a forefinger down the dip of his nose. He looked ready to go to sleep in her arms, dozing now, with his mouth set in a little ‘o’. ‘You and mom had these eyes. I was always pretty jealous of that.’

 

‘O… you have amazing eyes,’ Bellamy said with sincerity. It was true. He’d always thought Octavia’s green eyes suited her.

 

‘Yeah, but I have no idea where I got them.’ Octavia moistened her lips, obviously pondering asking a question. ‘Bell?’

 

‘Yeah,’ Bellamy said.

 

‘I never actually asked you outright if… if you know who my father is?’ Octavia looked up, a crease settling between her brows.

 

Beneath all the war paint and bravado was his little sister, and he wished he could give her a better answer than the only one he had. ‘No, I’m sorry, O. I never wanted to ask Mom, and she never told me. I don’t even know if-’ He stopped short, wincing slightly.

 

‘If she knew,’ Octavia finished for him, an edge of bitterness to her speech. ‘It’s okay, Bell. He’d be long gone by now anyway.’

 

‘You don’t need him, O. You’ve got a family,’ Bellamy reminded her.

 

‘I know.’ Octavia smiled unconvincingly, shrugging. ‘Just would have been nice to know.’

 

‘I know,’ Bellamy said sympathetically.

 

He missed his dad sometimes too, even though he now only had the faint outline of a face with curls like his, but cut short, and skin just a few shades darker. His name was Nimuel, Bellamy did remember that. He recalled Aurora telling him about his father when he was younger, in the years after he had died, but before Octavia was born. He was a plumber, mainly working in irrigation on the algae farms in Agro Station. He’d worked all hours, and Bellamy had only been four when he died, but he could still just about remember that he’d loved his father… a lot. At least he had that. Octavia had nothing.

 

‘I hope the next one has green eyes.’ Octavia smirked.

 

‘Next one?’ Bellamy spluttered, coming out of his revere and pausing in the midst of untangling Selene’s mane.

 

Octavia narrowed her eyes at him.

 

Bellamy scoffed. ‘Trust me. That’s not going to happen.’

 

‘Bell… you managed to get Clarke knocked up when the implants were supposedly in date and working. I just came from the med bay; Abby’s stooped to asking Lincoln what methods grounder women use. The chances of August getting a baby brother or sister sooner or later are pretty good, I’d say.’

 

Bellamy was staring intently at Octavia, jaw clenched. ‘Does that mean… yours is out of date now?’

 

‘No, I got mine just before we came down.’

 

Bellamy breathed out a heavy sigh of relief. The fact he was a father was surreal enough without his little sister waltzing around with a grounder baby in tow.

 

Octavia rolled her eyes at him.

 

‘You know, you’re forgetting one very important detail.’ Bellamy finished up with Selene, patting her on the nose and earning himself a gentle nicker in appreciation.

 

‘Enlighten me,’ Octavia challenged him.

 

Bellamy lowered his voice, walking over to take a dozing August from her. ‘Clarke and I would actually have to be together for that to happen.’

 

Octavia rolled her eyes at him as he began to walk away from her. She jogged to catch him up. ‘Well, you looked pretty ‘together’ in Polis.’

 

‘That was a mistake.’ Bellamy was still trying to get away from Octavia, striding toward the cabin with August passed out in his arms.

 

‘So was I. So was August! Happy mistakes happen all the time.’ Octavia laughed, throwing her arms up. ‘Hey!’ she grabbed Bellamy’s shoulder roughly and turned him back to face her. ‘Why are you running away?’

 

‘Because I don’t want to talk about this with you, O,’ Bellamy huffed. As happy as he was to see his sister acting a little more carefree, a little more like he remembered her being before their mother died, he wasn’t pleased with the topic of conversation.

 

‘I don’t mean from me.’ Octavia shook her head slowly. ‘I mean… you seemed so happy in Polis. Look, Clarke isn’t always my favourite person, but she makes you happy right? And… you have August together.’

 

Bellamy felt her words coming like punches he couldn’t quite managed to dodge. ‘August is _exactly_ the reason it’s a bad idea.’

 

‘Why? Because it would be so terrible for him if his parents were together?’ Octavia said sarcastically.

 

Bellamy looked about to make sure no one was listening to them, and kept his voice low. ‘And what if didn’t work out?’

 

‘What if it did?’ Octavia argued.

 

‘O…’ Bellamy sighed, bone tired now. He had this argument internally every other day, he didn’t need to have it with his sister as well.

 

‘This isn’t about August, Bell, it’s about you two.’ Octavia had a face like thunder. ‘You never could stay on the same page for more than a minute, but you _have to_ now because of him.’ She pointed to August earnestly. ‘Stop using August as an excuse because you’re both too proud to admit you actually might have something great.’

 

Bellamy tried to defend himself, but was interrupted, ‘Hey, you don’t -’

 

‘Bellamy, you know, you have a few crappy qualities, but I never thought of you as a coward before.’ Octavia stormed off toward the center of camp before Bellamy could respond.

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke was still a little damp from giving August his bath when Miller knocked to inform them the Commander had arrived from Polis, apparently with Roan in her company.

 

Bellamy had been brooding all afternoon, and the news only deepened his frown.

 

Clarke had asked him earlier what was wrong, but he’d only said ‘nothing’, and continued to brood. Octavia had arrived to braid Clarke’s hair, which she had hoped would cheer him up, but if anything it just made him more miserable.

 

She left August with Bellamy while she went to get changed, since Bellamy was already dressed. He didn’t speak, or react at all, when Clarke reappeared and announced they should get going.

 

‘Are you planning on sulking the whole night?’ Clarke thought she might as well ask.

 

Bellamy looked startled, and then guilty as he processed what she’d said. ‘Sorry. Just got a lot on my mind.’

 

Bringing August, he followed her out the front door toward the mess tent to greet Lexa, Roan, and a number of others. Gelma, Cullan, and her daughter, Mea, who Clarke figured must be three by now, were among the train of followers that had accompanied the commander up from Polis.

 

‘Skaigoufa,’ Gelma made a beeline for Clarke as soon as she saw her, pressing a kiss to each of her cheeks. ‘You look well.’

 

‘I am,’ Clarke said, taking Gelma’s hands in hers.

 

Cullan greeted her next, and the two women embraced.

 

‘Here. I can take him.’ Clarke heard her mother say behind her. Abby was reassuring a stressed looking Bellamy, lifting an upset August from his arms and into her own. ‘It’s just the teething. I’ll find him something to chew on.’

 

‘His teeth are coming?’ Gelma’s brow was deeply furrowed in empathy as she stepped away from Clarke toward Abby.

 

Abby looked up from tending to August to regard the stranger that was advancing on her.

 

Clarke sped up to step astride with Gelma as she walked. ‘Mom, this is Gelma,’ she said simply. She hadn’t hidden her time in Gelma’s village from her mother, but she had worried about her meeting Gelma all the same. Gelma had the chance to teach Clarke all the things Abby was meant to have taught her, like how to feed her baby, how to change his diaper, and soothe him to sleep. Clarke was a little bit worried Abby might resent Gelma for that.

 

‘Of course. I’m Abby.’ Her face gave nothing away as she looked Gelma up and down, holding out a hand politely.

 

‘It’s so good to finally meet Clarke’s mother,’ Gelma took the hand that Abby had offered and held it in both of hers. ‘You have a beautiful family.’

 

‘Thank you.’ Abby’s features softened. She glanced around Gelma to where Cullan was stood with Mea on her hip. ‘So do you.’

 

* * *

 

‘Does it worry you? The amount of time Roan’s spending in Polis?’ Clarke asked Lexa quietly, sat by the fire warming themselves as the last few stragglers winded their way out of the mess tent either toward the fires, or toward their homes.

 

‘He has confided in me that his mother and he are not currently... seeing eye to eye,’ Lexa responded carefully.

 

Clarke smiled, thinking that Lexa made it sound like a petty family feud, rather than life or death. The Queen of Azgeda wanting to stage a coup, and her son trying to hold her off, whilst also convincing her that he was faithful to her and spying on the commander on her behalf, could not in any shape or form be considered ‘petty’. Clarke’s smile faltered as she looked across the fire to where the light was licking Roan’s sullen face. Being a double agent was taking a toll on him. His serious eyes were accompanied by dark bags and his mouth was permanently downturned.

 

‘Do you trust him?’ Clarke asked.

 

Lexa sighed, following Clarke’s gaze to rest hers upon Roan too. ‘I believe he is very different to his mother, and that he wants to be a good king. I have to believe he knows leading his people into a war that holds no honour would be against his beliefs.’

 

‘That’s a very long answer to a very short question.’ Clarke clenched her fists.

 

‘I want to trust him,’ Lexa abbreviated.

 

‘Me too,’ Clarke said softly. Taking Lexa’s hand, she squeezed it. ‘I should go get some sleep.’

 

Lexa nodded, looking pretty drained herself. ‘Goodnight, Clarke.’

 

Clarke left her and made her way to the cabin.

 

She immediately spotted Bellamy asleep, fully clothed on top of the covers, with August sprawled out in an almost identical fashion in his cot. Bellamy had been a fair bit tipsy, but covering it well, when he’d excused himself almost an hour earlier under the pretense of putting August to bed, saying he’d keep an eye on him until Clarke came home. In fairness, Clarke noticed he did have one of her paperbacks squashed halfway underneath his torso as proof that he’d at least tried to stay awake.

 

After first filling and stoking the woodburner to keep it going through the night, Clarke checked on August. His little, round belly going steadily up and down, and his bottom lip stuck right out just the way it always did when Clarke took something dangerous he’d found on the floor of Raven’s workshop off him right before her could stick it in his mouth. His sleep shirt was on backwards, courtesy of Bellamy, but August couldn't tell the difference, so she supposed it didn’t matter.

 

Turning around, she considered waking Bellamy, but he looked so peaceful, his features completely smooth for the first time in weeks. Clarke bent over him, removed the book from his side, and attempted to fix the sharp fold that was now in it’s cover, before placing it on the one stool she had that she kept as a bedside table. Deciding he might be cold, Clarke took one of the extra blankets she kept by August’s cot and threw it over him. Taking off her shoes and pants, she slipped on a set of linen ones she was pretty sure she stole from Polis, and clambered into the other side of the bed, under the blankets, sidling up to Bellamy for warmth.

 

* * *

 

Bellamy woke feeling pretty awful, his belt was digging in where he never took it off last night, and he’d obviously misjudged his limit on the moonshine because his temples were throbbing. He should never have let Murphy talk him into doing those shots because now he was scared to open his eyes more than a crack. He just knew the sunlight was going to fry his brain as soon as he did.

 

‘How is it this bright in here?,’ he rasped to himself, his throat bone dry.

 

Swinging his legs off the bed, eyes still barely open, his feet hit the ground a lot earlier that he thought they would, and he crumpled into a pile at the side of the bed. Eyes now wide open, he heard the movement of sheets as someone shifted behind him. Groaning he pulled himself up via the bed frame, now very much aware he was in the cabin, not his bunk. That made a lot more sense.

 

‘Are you okay?’ Clarke asked groggily.

 

Bellamy gazed at her, blinking rapidly, making sense of the sunlight that was making a beautiful, blurry halo out of her hair. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I just wasn’t expecting… the floor.’ He grimaced at how much of an idiot he sounded.

 

Clarke laughed at him, then began stretching out her limbs. ‘Can you get August for me or do you think you’ll drop him?’

 

Bellamy sent her a glare that was playful more than anything, and pushed off the bed to go get August where he was already wide awake and chewing on the ear of a crude soft toy Harper had made for him. There was still some debate over whether it was a horse or a bunny, but August called it ‘Poey’, which was his version of ‘pony’, so he’d obviously made up his mind on the matter.

 

Clarke took August from Bellamy, ‘Poey’ in tow, and set him on her lap as she started to lift up her shirt.

 

Bellamy swallowed roughly and scrunched his eyes shut, rubbing his temples to try and alleviate his headache, taking a moment to roll his shoulders and crack his neck. His lower back felt terrible from sleeping with his belt on. He opened his eyes to find Clarke watching him from where she was feeding August on the bed.

 

‘Hm?’ He prompted.

 

‘Are you okay? I didn’t think you drank that much last night.’

 

‘No, no, I didn’t it’s uh…’ Bellamy denied, and started taking his belt off, ‘I’ve been wearing this all night and I think it’s left a dent in my spine.’

 

Clarke examined him critically. ‘You have some spit up on your shirt.’

 

‘That’s not… August’s.’ Bellamy grimaced as more of last night came back to him.

 

Clarke raised an eyebrow, silently asking.

 

‘Um, Murphy.’

 

Clarke nodded slowly. ‘Well, some of your looser pants are in the basket under the crib. Give me your dirty clothes; I’m going down to the lake to do a wash today.’

 

Bellamy wasn’t so sure about that. ‘Clarke, I can’t ask you-’

 

‘Bellamy, just let me help you. I have the time. I’m doing a wash anyway, and you haven’t had a day off in a week,’ Clarke interrupted. ‘At this rate you’re not going to have any clean clothes left for August’s naming.’

 

Bellamy sighed, conceding that at least in that she had a point. He turned his back to her to pull the basket out, tugging out the drawstring pants, he started undressing. Once he had the new pants on he searched the basket for a shirt that might fit him, holding up one of Clarke’s, he decided he wasn’t going to be that lucky. Sighing, he threw it back in the basket, and went to pull his boots on. He began awkwardly hopping around, and then landed on the end of the bed to lace them up. When he was done he stood to say goodbye.

 

‘No shirt?’ Clarke asked, studying his chest a little too hard.

 

Bellamy suddenly felt exposed, a fought not to cross his arms over his chest. ‘There’s no way I’m putting the Murphy vomit shirt back on.’ He grabbed his jacket where it was hung on a hook by the door, and pulled it on over his bare chest.

 

Clarke laughed, then lowered her gaze back down to August, stroking his back rhythmically as he ate. ‘Okay, I’ll see you later.’

 

‘Yeah.’ Bellamy stood still a moment, wavering, desperately wanting to walk over there and give his son a kiss goodbye, and maybe, well… it just felt like thats what he would do, if they were a family. He rolled his eyes at himself, remembering that they _are_ a family. Just, sometimes it felt like it should be different. Like it should be… more. There were too many lines he was afraid to cross.

 

He averted his gaze and exited the cabin, closing the door softly behind him so as not to disturb them.

 

Bellamy had been hoping that since it was still quite early, there wouldn’t be too many people around. Unfortunately, with the visitors the camp currently had, there was a lot more to do than usual, and the clean up crew was in full force. A number of his own cadets were out with them, keeping an eye on things.

 

‘Have a good night, Sir?’ A seventeen year old cadet called Harris Morten clocked him exiting Clarke’s cabin. Bellamy tried to be friends with his cadets, not really enjoying all the incidentals of being in a leadership position. He still balked every time they called him ‘Sir’.

 

Bellamy pointedly ignored them.

 

‘It’s okay, Sir, yours isn’t the first walk of shame we’ve seen this morning,’ another cadet, Bellamy knew only as ‘Wex’, called after him.

 

The joking was well-meant and harmless, Bellamy knew that, but he shot a glare over his shoulder at them to let them know their fun was over, or at least it better be if they didn’t wanted to be doing 100 push ups next time he was on shift.

 

‘Sorry, Sir,’ Harris apologised, smirking all the while, as Wex leant against him, sniggering unattractively.

 

* * *

 

About half an hour after Bellamy left, Clarke was busy changing August’s diaper as he tried to escape her, rolling from side to side. ‘August, I swear…’ she muttered to herself. Finally, she wrangled him into a fresh cloth.

 

There was a quick series of raps on the door.

 

‘It’s open!’ Clarke hadn’t redone the latch since Bellamy had left.

 

‘Morning,’ Raven announced, ‘I brought breakfast!’

 

Clarke sighed, grasping August under the armpits and swinging him up onto her hip as she stood. ‘Thank you. Just as well I haven’t dressed him yet, because I just know he’s going to paint himself with the oatmeal.’

 

August was wriggling like mad, starting to go red in the face.

 

‘Here, I’ll take him,’ Raven grabbed him off Clarke and held him up. ‘Oof, you’re getting big, _Travieso_.’

 

‘He’s huge, right?’ Clarke huffed. She was sort of sad August was starting to lose some of his roundness, and his legs and arms had definitely begun to lengthen out a bit. In not too long he would be a toddler, and then he’d be a child, and then… well, Clarke would rather not think about it.

 

Something catching her eye, Raven leant to the side to peer around Clarke, her tone flat though her amusement was clear in her eyes, ‘did he evaporate?’

 

Clarke looked around to where Bellamy’s clothes were still sat in a messy pile on the floor at the side of the bed. ‘Oh no, I’m just taking them to wash.’

 

‘That’s,’ Raven paused, bouncing August as he chewed the bit of ponytail that he’d managed to grab, ‘domestic,’ she decided.

 

* * *

 

‘I’ll pay you back somehow,’ Bellamy said as he stood at the door to his bunk and accepted the bag of clean clothes from Clarke.

 

‘Oh, don't worry, I’ll find something for you to do,’ she promised with a smile. Clarke then leant against the door frame and held up a second, smaller, cloth bag.

 

‘What’s that?’ Bellamy threw the bag of clean washing onto his bed and ushered Clarke inside, closing the door.

 

‘Something very rare, and precious, so you’d better be careful with it,’ Clarke teased.

 

Bellamy cocked his head at her, waiting.

 

‘It’s a white button up with no stains and no holes,’ Clarke said, digging into the bag to carefully draw out the shirt.

 

‘For the naming?’

 

Clarke nodded. ‘It’s got a bit of a strange collar but I think you can pull it off.’

 

Bellamy smiled as he took it from her. ‘Wow… thanks. Where did you find it?’

 

‘I didn’t,’ Clarke admitted. ‘Mom did. She gave it to me today when I dropped August off. I think she’s got a soft spot for you now.’

 

Bellamy snorted, sitting down on the end of his bed with the garment still in his hands. ‘I don’t think so. She still looks at me with that little bit of suspicion, like she’s just waiting for me to mess up.’

 

‘She’s just protective.’ Clarke shrugged. Being a mother now, she’d learnt there were worse faults than that. And there was the fact she also happened to know exactly what her mom was afraid of, after all, she’d told Clarke outright, but Clarke wasn’t going to tell Bellamy about that conversation. Things had only really just got back to normal between them.

 

* * *

 

Making sure August was clean and happy and ready for the ceremony at daybreak was the worst experience of Clarke’s life, and she was someone who could pretty literally say they’d been through hell. She couldn’t even be annoyed at him, because of course he was mad he’d been woken up at just gone five a.m., Clarke was mad about that too. She would admit, in the symbolic sense it made perfect sense that namings were performed at the very start of a day, but in practice it was a terrible idea. August was making his opinion known and screaming his head off in protest.

 

‘I’m sorry, baby.’ Clarke shushed him, and held him close. Whispering and humming a song into his ear, Clarke shut her eyes tight and prayed to whoever was up there that he’d begin to calm down soon.

 

After almost ten minutes of persistent wailing Clarke was extremely stressed out, a few tears escaping her own tired, bloodshot eyes as she tried to keep on soothing August, for all the good it was doing.

 

Clarke let out a long breath of relief as the latch clicked and Bellamy entered.

 

‘One of the cadets said he’d been crying for a while,’ Bellamy’s deep brown eyes flickered over the scene in front of him; August’s bright red face, glistening with tears, his nose dripping, and Clarke’s subsequently exhausted expression as she held him in her arms.

 

Clarke sniffed angrily, taking a hand away from August’s back to roughly wipe away tears from her chin.

 

Bellamy reached out silently, and pulled them both into him, wrapping his arms around Clarke, with August caught in the middle. Somehow, the combination of the two of them together, wrapped around him, convinced August to begin to quieten down. After a few minutes he was down to just a whimper.

 

Clarke let out a deep sigh, bending her neck to rest her forehead against Bellamy’s collarbone in relief. ‘I got tear stains on your new shirt.’

 

‘It’s just water,’ Bellamy replied softly, running a gentle hand up and down her back. ‘You need to get changed too; give him here.’

 

Clarke watched as Bellamy bundled August up in his arms, securing the blanket she’d wrapped him in, tucking his head down to give August a few kisses on his hot, red cheeks and creased forehead.

 

‘I’ll take him for a walk while you change.’ Bellamy leant in a pressed another kiss to Clarke’s own increasingly pink cheek.

 

She watched with a furrowed brow as he left, confused by what exactly that gesture meant.

 

* * *

 

As they stood in front of Lexa and a number of the followers of the flame, with Clarke holding August wrapped up in a couple of blankets, she thought of all the moments that had led up to this moment. When she’d found August she could never have foreseen this outcome, but now she was here, she couldn’t imagine it any other way either.

 

They’d chosen a space in the center of the camp for the naming, and Lexa’s followers had placed a basin of sorts in the center, filled it with kindling, and lit it ablaze. They’d then encouraged the crowd to gather on one side by standing in front of it, facing outwards.  

 

Lexa, dressed as the commander, with her warpaint present on her face in it’s usual pattern, beckoned them forth to hand August over to a bald, serious man whom Clarke had met only briefly a few times, but recognised as Lexa’s closest advisor, Titus. He took August gently, still wrapped in his blanket, chewing contentedly on a square of clean cloth.

 

‘What is the name you have chosen for this child?’ Titus asked in english, as Clarke had requested. She wanted all of Skaikru to be able to understand what was going on.

 

‘August,’ Bellamy and Clarke answered in unison.

 

Titus opened the top of the blanket to reveal August’s chest.

 

Clarke stiffened, sure August was going to feel the cold and start crying again. Bellamy must have seen her reaction, because she felt his fingers find hers and grip them tightly. Luckily, it seemed the fire behind Titus was warm enough that August wasn’t bothered.

 

Titus accepted a small paintbrush doused in ink from one of his companions, and went to work painting the symbol of Arkadia on his small chest. ‘August kom Skaikru, may Becca Pramheda grant you a brave heart and sage mind.’ He passed the paintbrush back, and let the same companion dip his thumb in a pot of dark paste.

 

August, by some miracle, didn’t make a sound as Titus drew his thumb down his face from his hairline to the tip of his nose, leaving a dark brown line. Titus held out his hand again to his companion, and this time it was merely cleaned off. ‘You have chosen a _keryon nomon en nontu_ for your son?’

 

‘ _Godparents,_ ’ Clarke thought. ‘Yes,’ she answered, looking over her shoulder at her friends, ‘Octavia Blake...’

 

Octavia’s face broke out into the widest grin Clarke had seen on her in a long time.

 

‘...and Jasper Jordan,’ Bellamy finished for her, motioning for the pair to join them.

 

Jasper jerked, looking up at them with wide eyes, trying to make sense of why he’d just heard his name. His hair was sticking out from under where his goggles were perched  at an angle on his head, matching the confusion he was wearing on his face.

 

Jasper had been Clarke’s choice, and Octavia was Bellamy’s. Clarke had sort of wanted Raven, but she completely understood why Bellamy had needed it to be Octavia. Raven was here. She was already a part of August’s everyday life, and totally secure in her position in it, despite not being related at all. Clarke knew that Bellamy desperately wanted Octavia to feel even a fraction of that same security, even though she could be absent more often than not.

 

Jasper had been Clarke’s choice because… it just made sense. She saw that now. She’d done her best to show him how much he meant to all of them, during the worst days when he could barely move for grief and depression. Beyond that, she was just sure thst out of all the people that she could have chosen, this would mean the most to Jasper.

 

It was only when the pair made it up there Clarke realised what an odd couple they looked; lithe, fierce Octavia, dressed in all her regalia and weaponry with her grounder tattoo winding up her arm, and next to her sweet, scruffy, gangly Jasper in his oversized coat, armed with nothing but his wits. It made her smile.

 

Titus placed August in Octavia’s arms, and reorganised the blanket so he was warm. Then Titus addressed both Octavia and Jasper, ‘Do you pledge yourselves to the protection of this child? Do you swear to shelter and keep him for all the years of his life, until your deaths?’

 

‘Yes,’ Jasper said.

 

‘I do,’ Octavia followed.

 

‘Do you pledge to train and guide him? Do you swear to teach him to honour the teachings of Becca Pramheda?’

 

‘I do,’ they said, in unison this time.

 

‘This probably would have sounded more impressive in trigedasleng,’ Bellamy quipped quietly to Clarke.

 

She stuck an elbow into his side as discreetly as possible as a signal for him to be quiet.

 

Titus silently took August from Octavia’s arms and brought him back to Clarke. ‘August kom Skaikru, first named of your kru, you have the blessing of the commander. Kom graun, yu na groun op.’

 

‘Kom graun, yu na groun op,’ the crowd echoed back.

 

 _‘From the earth, you will grow.’_ Clarke recognised it as the blessing Lexa had placed on him the first time she met him, and so she caught Lexa’s gaze. It was warm; she was watching attentively, and nodded slightly in recognition of Clarke looking to her, the corners of her mouth upturning.

 

As things grew more uncertain, with Roan only just managing to keep his mother’s wrath at bay, and war with Azgeda looking like it was coming sooner rather than later, Clarke was only the more glad that Lexa felt inclined to protect August. Clarke had been so scared when August was a newborn that she wouldn’t be able to protect him alone, but then came everyone else; Gelma and Cullan, her friends from the dropship, her mom, Lexa, Roan, and… Bellamy... most of all Bellamy. There was always going to be someone on his side, she felt sure of that.

 

* * *

 

 

Bellamy felt fingers wrap around his wrist as he sat in the mess hall, staring into the distance, watching where Octavia was sat with Lincoln and a few other members of Trikru, laughing raucously at something one or the other of them had said.

 

It was Clarke. It was always Clarke, though, wasn’t it? She always talked him through these things. ‘You should go talk to her. You still haven’t told her what we decided, have you?’

 

Bellamy shook his head, chewing his lip in deep thought.

 

‘Bellamy?’ Clarke prompted him.

 

‘Okay, yeah.’ He clambered out of his seat and made his way over to Octavia. Dodging the reams of people in their way. He back to see Clarke talking with Gelma, who seemed to be advising her on something. Shifting his gaze he found August, sat happily in Jasper’s lap as their friends fawned over him. Bellamy sighed, and continued his way forward.

 

Trikru quieted as he arrived.

 

‘Octavia, Lincoln, could I speak with you real quick?’ He stood with his broad shoulders squared, unsure of himself but wanting to appear otherwise.

 

Octavia shared a look with Lincoln, and then began to nod, ‘Yeah, sure.’

 

The pair followed Bellamy a short distance so they were outside the mess tent, away from prying ears. Bellamy turned his collar up against the chill, and folded his arms as he addressed them, ‘So, um, there's something I need to know.’

 

There was a beat of silence.

 

‘Which is?’ Octavia prompted.

 

Lincoln maintained the strong and silent facade, arms crossed in front of him, letting Octavia do the talking.

 

‘You two are serious about this, right?’ Bellamy asked gesturing between the two of them, and then immediately regretting doing so. That had not come out the way he’d wanted it to. It was a stupid question anyway.

 

‘Bellamy?’ Octavia almost growled.

 

‘Sorry, that’s not… I…’ Bellamy slowed down, and breathing deeply, decided to get to the point. ‘When we were talking about godparents, Clarke and I were also discussing what would happen to August if we were unable to take care of him anymore…’ he gulped at the thought, a bitter taste in his mouth.

 

The couple looked slightly shocked, like they already knew what Bellamy was going to say but needed him to say it anyway.

 

‘We realised… provided that you guys, you know, were together and settled, we would prefer it to be... you. Obviously, we’d want Abby to be in his life, but… we’d also like him to still have parents, in some kind of way.’ Bellamy fumbled with his words, struggling to organise them.

 

Suddenly the words didn’t matter, because Octavia was hugging him tight with no sign of letting go, her nails almost digging into his back. ‘Of course we would, but you’re not going anywhere, Bell.’

 

‘I would be honoured, should it ever come to that,’ Lincoln finally spoke, his tone heavy with equal amount of confusion and gratitude.

 

Bellamy had never really been more than acquaintances with Lincoln, and he knew that was because of their history. It was a difficult obstacle to overcome. However, since he’d been visiting with Octavia, they’d come to some sort of understanding, and mutual respect. Bellamy saw how Lincoln and Octavia complimented each other. Though he could be fierce when he needed to, Lincoln was, in truth, gentle and quiet in nature, and so he evened out Octavia’s own more fiery qualities. That was exactly the kind of man Bellamy would want raising his son if he couldn’t. He’d thought about it a lot, talked about it with Clarke more than once. Abby was the obvious choice. She was August’s grandmother, she was here, and she loved him immeasurably. That was plain to see. But, she couldn’t give August the life Bellamy felt he needed. If the worst did happen, Bellamy wanted August to still be raised in the way he and Clarke would have wanted. Bellamy knew Octavia and Lincoln were their best chance of that. Bellamy had raised Octavia… it made sense. It was a perfect circle.

 

Bellamy didn’t feel anything else needed to be said, and so he folded his arms around his sister, squeezing her tight, hoping than in making sure his son would be fine without his parents, he wasn’t tempting fate.

 

He perched his chin on Octavia’s head to watch Lincoln where he was stood behind her, seemingly deep in thought. ‘Hey, could you give us a minute?’

 

Lincoln, still looking a bit dazed, nodded sharply, and started to make his way back to his friends.

 

‘I wanted to tell you, you were right,’ Bellamy murmured.

 

Octavia finally let go of him, pulling away. Her eyes were burning with a hundred different questions as she considered the expression on his face.

 

Bellamy didn’t meet her eyes. ‘I'm not a coward, but I have been acting like one.’

 

‘Both of you have,’ Octavia said dryly, never one to let Clarke off the hook.

 

‘I don’t know how to do this,’ Bellamy admitted, wringing his hands just to find something to do with them. He thought about Clarke, and why he'd just accepted defeat when she'd pushed him away that night in the woods. He'd told himself that it was out of respect for her, and that her decision made sense. But, while he did respect Clarke, deep down, he knew it had been mostly fear; he was so afraid of losing her, he'd never really tried to have her in the first place. 

 

‘Just… jump, Bell,’ Octavia said. ‘Haven’t you wasted enough time already?’

 

* * *

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000) 

* * *

 


	9. Something Untouched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven and Murphy make a plan, and Bellamy executes one.

Spring had only just started but it was easily the warmest day of the year so far. 

 

August was sat in only his cloth, chatting to himself as he played with a set of little wooden horses Roan had gifted to him at his naming. Clarke had agreed to let her mom cut some shape into his hair so he didn’t have to keep pushing it out of his face, but the dark, curly mop he’d been cultivating for a while now was still in full force.

 

Clarke couldn’t believe he was already almost a year old. She still wasn’t quite sure how to deal with the crawling thing… or the putting everything in his mouth thing. He also had quite a few fully-fledged teeth now, with more starting to cut through. It all just reminded her, one day August was going to be completely grown up, and there was absolutely no way for her to stop that from happening.

 

‘Mama.’ August was holding out one of his wooden horses for Clarke to take. 

 

She did, and smiled at him as she galloped it across the blanket they were sat on in a way that never failed to make him smile. 

 

‘Pony. August, can you say Pony?’ Clarke stilled the little horse to gaze intently at the little boy.

 

He frowned, dropped his own horse, and reached out both hands for the one Clarke had. ‘Poey,’ he said, with some amount of conviction, then continued to babble. Still not quite there.

 

When Clarke didn’t hand the horse to him, August got even more determined, getting on to his front to crawl, a milestone he’d finally reached in the past month. Once he was near enough to try and grab the horse, he reached out a chubby hand toward her. His other arm wasn’t angled correctly to hold his weight and so it buckled and he landed on his front with an soft ‘umph’.

 

Clarke gasped and quickly scooped him up. 

 

With a wide-eyed, perplexed look on his face, August announced, ‘Uh-oh.’

 

Clarke couldn’t help but let out a short snort of laughter. 

 

Seeing her laugh at him, August began to chuckle to himself, in that little way he always did. It slowly grew into intense, loud, belly laughter. 

 

The more he laughed, the more Clarke couldn’t help laughing too. She knew they were right in the center of camp, and were probably drawing some attention, but Clarke couldn’t bring herself to focus on anything but August.

 

Eventually he was shaking so hard, he sat down hard, with Clarke still holding him, and was coughing in between chuckles. 

 

Bringing him back in and giving him a few soft pats on the back, Clarke kissed his head. ‘You’ll get there.’

 

There was a loud thump as Bellamy landed on the blanket beside them, still in his uniform, lying back in the sun with his eyes closed. He’d just finished a long morning shift. 

 

‘Dada!’ August squealed in delight.

 

Smiling, Clarke leant over and seated August on Bellamy’s stomach. 

 

August squealed and hit his hands against Bellamy’s chest, eager for his dad to give him some attention.

 

‘Whatcha doing there, son?’ Bellamy said in a mock gruff voice, opening one eye to peer at him. 

 

August just laughed. 

 

Bellamy took August into his arms as he clambered up onto his feet. He swung him around and up and onto his shoulders. August immediately started tugging at Bellamy’s hair, not that Bellamy seemed to notice. ‘A bunch of people are going down to the lake for a few hours, I was thinking I would take August for his first swimming lesson.’

 

‘Yeah, okay.’ Clarke felt slightly dejected, but smiled all the same.

 

As usual, Bellamy saw right through her. ‘Sorry, Clarke. We can wait until you have an afternoon off.’ A small crinkle appeared on his brow, but Clarke couldn’t quite take him seriously with the crazy hairdo August was inflicting on him. 

 

‘No. It’s fine. We don’t know when the weather is going to be nice again,’ she argued. ‘Next time, okay?’

 

‘August give Mommy a kiss goodbye,’ Bellamy instructed, leaning down as Clarke rose up to meet them. 

 

August puckered up and dropped a big, wet one on Clarke’s cheek. As he drew away Bellamy also placed a small peck higher on the same cheek. He was gone before Clarke could register it, jogging off with August bouncing on his broad shoulders.

 

‘Huh,’ Clarke mused to herself.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A few days later Clarke was sat in Raven’s workshop, spinning around in of Raven’s office chairs with August on her lap. ‘I seriously think something’s happened he’s not telling me about. I catch him staring at me like… like he’s trying to telepathically tell me something,’ Clarke complained. ‘I just wish he’d get on with it.’

 

‘Clarke…’ Raven rolled her eyes, keeping her eyes trained on the computer, typing away at some code Clarke couldn’t make head nor tail of, ‘he’s always stared.’

 

‘Yeah, disparagingly maybe,’ Clarke said tartly. 

 

Raven just sighed, there was a beat of heavy silence, and she spun about to face Clarke, chewing her lip. ‘So, I spoke to Murphy.’

 

‘Oh… no?’ Clarke tried to read Raven’s face to decide how she should respond. She couldn’t quite work out their relationship. Friends or enemies? Frenemies? Raven gave Murphy shit about 90% of the time, and yet when they spoke they bounced off each other so well. Clarke wasn’t aware they talked though, not outside of when they were hanging out as a group.

 

‘No, it was good. He told me ...where he was all those months.’ 

 

Clarke ignored August pulling at her hair and stilled the chair, waiting for Raven to continue. For over a year Murphy had said nothing of where he’d been, and what had become of the others that had trekked out into the desert with him and Jaha. Everyone had just figured they’d all died from exposure, or been set upon by bandits. But, he’d been gone almost five months. If that was the whole story he’d have only been gone about a week. 

 

‘The city of light wasn’t real, Clarke, but there is something out there, across the desert.’ Raven smiled, indicating it was good news.

 

‘What?’ 

 

‘A lab. A real life, functioning lab, with resources we can use!’ Raven looked like a kid on Christmas morning; a brand new science kit in her stocking. 

 

‘With medical supplies?’ Clarke couldn’t pretend she wasn’t a little bit drawn in by this news.

 

‘Probably,’ Raven nodded.

 

‘Raven… are you sure you want to go out there? Murphy was the only one who came back last time.’ Clarke’s suspicious nature couldn’t allow her to be quite as pleased as Raven was. ‘You can’t even be sure it’s everything he says it is.’

 

‘Murphy told me everyone else died on the way there but him and Jaha. Only reason Jaha’s dead is because he went even more loopy,’ Raven tapped the side of her head, ‘and the grounders that live there shot him.’ 

 

Clarke flinched. She wasn’t exactly a fan of Jaha but it wasn’t so fun to hear he’d died out there all alone like that. 

 

Raven didn’t seem to notice Clarke’s expression, and continued. ‘If they died on the way there, that’s only because they didn’t have the resources or a guide, we have both.’

 

Clarke was intrigued most by one thing Raven had said. ‘There’s a grounder colony there?’

 

‘It’s hush hush, or so Murphy says. They stay out the coalition's way because they’re the  _ ‘eunsen goufama’,’  _ She placed speech marks in the air. _ ‘ _ It’s why he took a few months before heading home; he stayed with them a while.’

 

‘Sorry, who are they?’ Clarke was confused. Raven had said the ‘children’ of something, but she couldn’t figure out what.

 

‘The hidden children. You know those kids the grounders abandon because they’re born with deformities from the radiation? The ones who get found, or who have families that refuse to abandon them, tend to end up there,’ Raven explained. ‘I was thinking I could leave in a day or two with Murphy and a few others. Just people we trust.’

 

Clarke held August a little tighter as he sucked on his fist. There were other people like him out there after all. 

 

‘Morning!’ Harper announced herself cheerfully, bouncing into the workshop with a small bag held at her side.

 

‘Hi!’ August exclaimed in excitement, his drool-coated hand falling from his mouth.

 

‘Hi, baby,’ Harper replied.

 

‘Hi,’ August repeated.

 

‘I didn’t know he’d learnt a new word,’ Harper said to Clarke as she came to stand with them.

 

‘Yeah,’ Clarke said with no small amount of pride. August was pretty quick off the bat with the talking, even if he’d only just got to crawling.

 

‘Well…’ Harper began as if imagining herself accompanied by a drumroll, and then started pulling out the contents of the bag she was carrying, ‘hopefully these will help with some other milestones.’

 

‘Oh… Harper,’ Clarke shook her head in disbelief at her friend’s kindness. ‘They’re perfect.’

 

In Harper’s hands were a set of small leather lace-ups with soft soles. 

 

‘Proving my point.’ Raven jerked her head toward Harper and her gift.

 

‘What do you mean?’ Harper asked as she passed the shoes over to Clarke.

 

‘I was telling Clarke earlier that if she needs help, we’re all here.’ 

 

‘I have Bellamy,’ Clarke said.

 

‘Bellamy could do with a break too,’ Harper said. ‘Take the afternoon off. Monty and I can take him and I’m sure your mom can take him tonight. She was telling me earlier she hasn’t had time with him in a while.’ Harper leant down to deftly take August from Clarke before she could protest.

 

‘Uhh…’ Clarke managed, still organising her thoughts. 

 

‘Say bye bye, August,’ Harper encouraged the baby, making his little fist wave as she exited.

 

Raven and Clarke watched Harper leave with matching quizzical expressions on both their faces.

 

‘Did she just steal my baby?’ Clarke asked Raven, reclining in her chair in disbelief, arms feeling empty.

 

‘Uh, huh.’ Raven nodded in the affirmative. ‘Monty better watch out.’

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke was clearing up the cabin when Bellamy burst through the door, tearing off his jacket and dumping it on the floor.

 

‘Hey! I’m about to wash this floor,’ Clarke complained.

 

Bellamy, smiling all the while, raised his hands in surrender. He bent to pick the jacket back off the floor and dumped it on the end of the bed instead.

 

Clarke rolled her eyes, thinking that was only marginally better.

 

Bellamy looked around with his hands on his hips, taking in the scene in front on him with a furrowed brow, and finding it wanting for something very important. ‘Clarke…’

 

‘Hmm?’ She looked up from where she was heating water over the wood burner. Trying to make sure everything stayed clean enough for August to safely put it in his mouth was a full time job just by itself.

 

‘I don’t want to freak you out, but this is normally the point where you hand me a baby.’

 

Clarke smiled. It was good that he seemed to have regained his sense of humour. Before the peace talks, Bellamy’s jokes had been few and far between. ‘Harper and Monty took him for the afternoon,’ Clarke explained. ‘Mom gave me the afternoon off as well for some reason. She’s taking August tonight.’

 

Bellamy looked between her, the bucket of water that was slowly beginning to boil, and the floor. ‘And… you’re using that free afternoon to clean the floor?’ 

 

Clarke huffed, pulling the boiling water off the heat and grabbing the mop she’d fashioned out a stick and a few old towels. ‘Your son has an oral fixation.’

 

Bellamy smiled warmly. ‘All babies have an oral fixation.’ He watched intently as Clarke dunked the mop and began to wipe the floor. ‘Give me that.’

 

Clarke stopped. ‘What?’

 

Bellamy stepped out of his shoes and socks and stuck them outside the door. ‘I’ll get it done quicker. I used to be a janitor, remember, and we need to get done in the next thirty minutes.’

 

‘What? Why?’ Clarke stood very still as Bellamy came over, standing very close, and pried the mop from her grasp.

 

‘Because, Princess, you need to have some fun.’

 

 

* * *

 

 

‘A lake? You wanted to show me a lake?’ Clarke stood at the edge of one of the lakes the camp had begun to use for bathing just recently, a confused expression on her face as she surveyed the still, silent expanse of water. The sun was still fairly high in the sky, bouncing off the water, making her squint.

 

Bellamy sighed light-heartedly, the corner of his mouth quirking as he came up behind her, hooking a few fingers around her wrist and leading her off to the right.

 

They travelled through the undergrowth for another half a mile, before coming to a jagged ridge that extended outways as far as Clarke could see. Without warning, Bellamy took a run at it, and with worryingly sure feet, clambered up to the top. He reached the top, and looked expectantly back down at her.

 

‘No,’ Clarke said simply.

 

‘Come on, it’s easier than it looks. I did it with August!’ 

 

Clarke’s face fell, the colour draining from it. ‘What?’

 

Bellamy gestured widely, beckoning her up. ‘Can we have this argument later? Get up here.’

 

Spurred on by her annoyance with Bellamy, Clarke took a run at the incline, and scrambled with both hands and feet up the rocks. 

 

Bellamy couched down to pull her up the last leg, tugging her into him so she ended up sat in between his knees. ‘You okay?’

 

Clarke was inspecting her lightly grazed palms intently. 

 

‘Clarke?’ 

 

She looked up at him, blue eyes full of an intensity Bellamy was a little scared of. ‘Seriously? You could have seriously injured yourself, and then where would August have been?’ she said sharply, pushing against his chest to convey her annoyance. 

 

Bellamy’s voice became very soft, ‘I was very careful. You know I wouldn’t put him in danger.’ He took his thumb and brushed a speck of dirt from Clarke’s chin.

 

‘I know,’ Clarke replied, shying away a little, still annoyed at him. She looked about them, not seeing a whole lot. Nothing but trees and Bellamy. ‘The question is, why did you think this was this worth it.’

 

‘I saw that.’ He caught her eyes with his and led them to look over the treetops to see what was shifting in the sky not so far away. ‘Just wait… can you see it?’

 

‘Is that… smoke?’ Clarke’s eyes narrowed. 

 

Bellamy shook his head. ‘No. You’ll see.’ He hopped down the opposite side of the incline, which was only marginally less steep in nature, and held out his hand for Clarke to follow him, and she did, taking his hands in hers. Leading her through the trees, he turned to see her reaction as a series of pools of water came into their line of sight. 

 

The formation made its way down the landscape in steps, each pool a little larger than the last. The shades of blue in their depths ranging from brilliant cobalt to a gentle aquamarine. They were surrounded by large, craggy rocks, speckled by moss, and bothered only by a flock of small birds who gathered further up the formation, tweeting away to one another. It would have been easy to believe there’d never been anyone else here in the whole of human history. There was the aura of something untouched about it.

 

Clarke let go of Bellamy’s hand to jog down to the edge, where she knelt to put out a hand over the water, feeling the wisps of steam getting caught against her palm and escaping through her fingers. She laughed, and turned back to meet Bellamy’s glittering brown eyes as he smiled at her. 

 

Bellamy had dropped the large pack he’d insisted on bringing, and was already tugging his shirt over his head and pulling off his boots. Once he’d stripped down to his boxers, he took a run and jump at the largest pool; the one Clarke was knelt at. He disappeared under the surface with a huge splash, emerging a second later with his hair plastered to his forehead and beads of water trailing down his face and body. He pushed his hair out his eyes.

 

Bellamy took both his hands and flicked water at her. ‘Come on! I bet even you never had a hot bath before, Princess.’

 

Clarke couldn’t resist. Bellamy held his nose and disappeared back under the water as she took off her shoes and pants, leaving her underwear and t-shirt on. Seeing Bellamy start to reemerge, Clarke ran at the spring and did a bomb into the water, sending a wave spilling over the few of the rocks around the edge. She moved back toward the edge and found she could feel the bottom, and so she stood, with the water at her waist. It was a perfect temperature; it seeped into her bones, forcing her to relax for the first time in a long time. It was slightly breezy now it was getting later in the afternoon, but the steam rising off the surface stopped her from feeling the chill. 

 

As she was wiping water from her eyes, she felt a grip around her knees. Panic shot through her as she was pulled off balance. 

 

Bellamy was laughing as he let go and pulled her into his chest to make sure her head didn’t go under.

 

‘Seriously?’ Clarke said, breathing heavily, trying to ignore the fact Bellamy was holding her with one hand resting, splayed out against the small of her back. 

 

‘Sorry. Don’t worry, by the way, I scouted the area last time. I think the only thing living in here is some algae.’

 

Clarke nodded to indicate she trusted him.

 

He let go of her, swimming away back toward the edge of the pool, he pulled himself back out.

 

Clarke blinked, watching him walk over to his pack. He was only wearing his white boxers, and they were now stuck to him like a second skin. She chewed her lip, watching the muscles in his back ripple as he unpacked a couple of blankets, and a bag full of food.

 

‘You thought of everything, huh?’ Clarke teased.

 

He looked back to her, smiling almost sheepishly, not an expression she saw too often.

 

Clarke wondered about that; whether this was planned. Had he asked Harper to take August? Or her mom to give her the day off? Clarke shook her head to herself, thinking she would regret considering this, because questions like that would always lead her to ‘why would he do that?’.

 

‘It gets better, hold on.’ Getting to the bottom of the pack, Bellamy began to tug out something large and awkward that was wrapped up in yet another blanket, heaving it into his arms. Clarke watched as he carried the package to a rock nearby and carefully placed it down. Unwrapping the blanket, he revealed a very clean and spruced up version of one of the record players they’d found in Polis.

 

‘Raven finished it?’ Clarke gasped.

 

‘Two days ago. Hold on I brought some records.’

 

Raven had been promising to hook up with player with a new battery and clean up the wiring for a couple of months. It had been hard for her to find the time though, and neither Clarke or Bellamy were going to bug her, since she was doing it as a favour.

 

‘I brought that ...uh,’ he held up one record, squinting at the faded writing, unable to make it out. 

 

‘Put it on then,’ she said, knowing exactly what album he was holding. She’d had only about five records she’d managed to get working, and the record players battery had died the same day. That was her fault; she must have played this same record a hundred times that day. When the music had filled a room, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to turn it off. There’d been music on the Ark, but it was always the same stuff. There had only been about a hundred on record, and she’d heard all of them a thousand times over by the time she came to the ground. They’d mostly been slow songs, patriotic songs, songs meant for cultural events; things like piano music with no lyrics. So, to Clarke, suddenly having access to popular music from before the fires, listening to the lyrics, hearing how people felt and lived all that time ago, how they spent their time, what they cared about, who they loved. It gave her goosebumps. She loved that Bellamy had thought to bring the record player. 

 

Bellamy pattered back over with a selection of three records, from which he plucked the one he knew was Clarke’s favourite, and slipped it onto the player, bringing the needle home on the record’s surface. He sent Clarke a smile, before flicking the switch on the side and cranking the volume to full. The first song started started relatively slow. The sounds that echoed around their small cabin, could easily get lost in this wilderness. 

 

‘Give me a hand,’ Clarke held out hers to him as he came back down to the edge.

 

With no hesitation, Bellamy took it. But, before he could pull her up, he felt a sharp tug, and found himself landing face first in the water. Spluttering, he surfaced, ‘What was that?’

 

‘Karma.’ Clarke was pursing her lips to stop herself from laughing outright at his expression.

 

‘Karma? That was pure vengeance.’ He swam to stop right in front of her.

 

Realising his eyes were obscured, she reached out a hand to brush the wet curls off his forehead. ‘You brought August here?’

 

‘Yeah,’ Bellamy said. ‘Sorry I didn’t say anything, I wanted to surprise you.’

 

‘It’s okay.’ Clarke’s voice was soft. She didn’t mind at all. She trusted Bellamy with him, completely.

 

‘You know, when I was here bathing August, I was thinking about…’ Bellamy paused, a pained look on his face, ‘Achilles.’

 

‘Achilles?’ Clarke raised a single eyebrow. 

 

Bellamy lowered his voice, eyes flickering with uncertainty, ‘I loved that story. Thetis dipped her son in the River Styx to make him invulnerable. I kept imagining that when I was holding August. Imagining this pool could make him strong. But…’

 

‘Even Achilles had a weakness, right?’ Clarke gripped Bellamy’s shoulder, leaning left to catch his eye, bringing him back to the present. Their legs tangled under the water as they bent their knees, floating, allowing the water to hold them up.

 

‘This world is a dangerous place to be a kid.’ Bellamy met her gaze, swallowing harshly. ‘I know I’m never going to be able to protect him all the time, and that’s…’ He bit his bottom lip.

 

‘I know. I’m terrified he’ll get ill, some sickness we’ve never seen before, or something.’ Clarke sighed, eyes downcast.

 

‘And where do you draw the line between making sure he can cope and-’

 

‘-exposing him to too much too soon.’

 

‘I think we’ve at least got a little while before we have to start teaching him hand-to-hand combat.’ Bellamy smiled, but he didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘I just want what’s best for him, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately... about what that means.’

 

Suddenly overwhelmed by how grateful she was to have someone else that was in this with her, Clarke slid her arms around Bellamy’s neck and pulled him into an embrace.

 

‘I just want to be sure…’ Bellamy spoke into the wet skin of her shoulder, and then trailed off. 

 

‘Of what?’ Clarke drew away a little, a dent between her brows. Bellamy was watching her so plaintively with those brown eyes of his she almost couldn’t breathe. His face was so close to hers. They hadn’t been so close since...

 

‘That you won’t run.’ Bellamy muttered, looking as scared as she’d ever seen him. ‘I had some sense talked into me recently, by Octavia.’ He scoffed, averting his eyes as if embarrassed. ‘She told me to do something.’

 

Clarke was just as scared as him. She wasn’t even sure what of, except that she was in a pool twice the size of their cabin and yet, here she was, pressed up against Bellamy, and it didn’t feel wrong at all. ‘What did she tell you to do?’

 

The sweet opening crescendo of the next song on the record began as his lips found hers. 

 

There was no desperation or tragedy in this kiss, not like the last one. It was gentle, and assured, for the most part. Bellamy held her to him, his hand under her shirt, he ran his fingers up the ridge of her spine as she brought her own hands up into his hair, scratching his scalp a little with her fingernails. 

 

‘Don’t leave me again,’ Bellamy pleaded in a murmur against her lips.

 

‘No,’ Clarke let out in a breath, unable to stop herself. It was a promise she wasn’t sure yet that she could keep.

 

Bellamy pulled away, resting his forehead against hers, with their eyes still closed, so close they could still feel each other’s breath on their faces. ‘I don’t want to be angry, or afraid anymore. I don’t want August to see those things in me. I want him to see us as stronger than that.’ Bellamy shuddered out a breath. If he could be brave for just a few more moments, he might be okay.

 

Clarke opened her eyes, taken aback by this. ‘You  _ are _ strong.’

 

‘Not it comes to this, and August.’ Bellamy hung his head, resting on her shoulder a moment, before straightening himself back up and looking her mournfully in the eyes. ‘What are we afraid of Clarke? Failing? We won’t. I won’t let us, okay? I want us to be a family. I hate every time I wake up in my bunk alone, every time I-’

 

Clarke covered his mouth with hers. There was a little more force in it this time, but Bellamy seemed to revel in it, all his insecurities washed away in the steam and the sunlight and Clarke wanting him, finally. He smiled against her lips. She was the one that pressed forward, wondering all the while if he could feel her heart beating. She could hear it thundering in her ears, feel it bruising her breastbone, like it was trying to escape. But not to hide. Not this time. She ran her tongue along his bottom lip, taking her time. It was almost a struggle to kiss him, she was trying so hard not to smile. 

 

Bellamy turned his head to get a better angle, the very tip of his tongue tracing the underside of hers, he took her bottom lip into his mouth. Then, leaving her with her lips parted, he moved to her jaw, pressing open mouthed kisses along it, up to her earlobe, his short beard scratched her skin lightly, tickling more than anything. Fingers played on the small on her back, tracing the dimples on either side of her spine. Using both hands he swept down over her hips to grasp her thighs, and tugged her legs up to wrap around his waist.

 

Clarke gasped into his shoulder, and gripped the hair at the nape of his neck.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She woke to the sensation of a draft against the soles of her feet. They were just peeking out the blanket. Shivering she pulled them back under and sat up, taking in her surroundings. The sun was just peaking through the trees to the east. She pulled the blanket up further over her bare chest. The steam from the hot spring rose around the rock they’d arranged themselves on, keeping them warm, for the most part. The record player was sat on the next rock over, still open, with the needle sat at the center of the record.

 

She didn’t move as she felt him shifting, too busy watching the sunrise. But she felt his fingers sweep her hair over her shoulder and lips brush against her back, over the tattoo at the base of her neck to her shoulder and collarbone. She lifted a hand to capture his jaw and pull him around a little so she could press a slow kiss to the corner of this mouth, taking a moment to marvel at the fact she was allowed to do that now. 

 

‘Morning,’ he said gruffly, eyes bright despite him just having woken.

 

‘Morning,’ she responded in kind. 

 

‘What’s this?’ He fiddled with the back of the necklace she was wearing, the only thing she still had on. 

 

‘It’s August and I.’ Clarke explained, somewhat elusive, her tone one of cool contentedness. 

 

Bellamy traced the plaited twine of the string around to the front and thumbed over the wooden moon and tiny star that had been carved to fit snugly on it.

 

‘It was a gift, when I left the village. Cullan said it would help me remember who I am.’ 

 

‘And who does this…’ he trailed two fingers over the beads and down Clarke’s breastbone a short distance, ‘say that you are?’

 

Clarke glanced between his eyes and his lips, enjoying the look in his eyes as he watched her back. ‘Someone with a home. People who are waiting for her.’ 

 

‘I’m kind of over waiting for you, Clarke,’ Bellamy smirked, taking her chin between two fingers he tipped her head up and kissed her again. He was trying to making up for lost time, and she wasn’t going to complain about it.

 

‘We should head back in a bit.’ Clarke brought them back to reality as he drew away. 

 

‘You miss August?’ Bellamy asked, curling his arms around her midriff to pull her back against his chest, perching his chin on her shoulder.

 

She rolled her head back against him, sighing, she complained quietly, ‘My boobs hurt.’

 

Bellamy laughed, throwing his head back, enjoying how candid she was suddenly being with him. ‘Okay, let’s go get our boy.’ 

 

The moved in sync, chucking clothes and blankets across to one another as they got dressed and packed up the bags.

 

Clarke watched as Bellamy pulled his shirt back over his head and swung the pack back onto his back. ‘You ready?’ He asked.

 

Clarke nodded, stepping up to him, arms folded.

 

He leant down and placed a lingering kiss on her lips.

 

‘We’re really doing this?’ Clarke said, still a little in awe of the past twenty-four hours. She felt a little like she was going to wake up, alone in her bed, at any moment.

 

‘Together,’ Bellamy promised, holding out his hand.

 

‘Together,’ Clarke repeated back firmly, sliding her fingers in-between his.

 

 

* * *

 

 

August was chilling out on the grass with Raven and Murphy when Clarke and Bellamy got back. Deciding to play it cool, Clarke and Bellamy kept a respectable distance from each other as they headed up toward him.

 

Bellamy was the first to reach him, jogging ahead. ‘Look who it is!’ 

 

August squealed and laughed as Bellamy swung him up into his arms, kissing him all over. 

 

Clarke was immediately there, smothering August in a similarly absurd amount of kisses, taking his chubby cheeks in both hands and pecking him on his nose. August screwed up his face and awkwardly rubbed his hands and forearms over it, trying to get rid of the evidence of the assault. 

 

‘How was the night off?’ Murphy smirked at the pair from where he was reclining on the grass. 

 

‘Good, yeah,’ Bellamy said.

 

‘Junior’s eaten and your mom changed him before she started her shift about an hour ago,’ Raven got them up to speed.

 

‘Thanks, Raven,’ Clarke said sincerely. She’d have to thank her mom, and Harper and Monty too when she saw them. ‘Can I talk you for a sec?’

 

‘Sure,’ Raven shrugged, clambering up and dusting herself off.

 

‘You’ll watch August?’ Clarke rubbed a hand up and down Bellamy’s arm.

 

‘Course,’ he said.

 

She fought the urge to rise up and give him and August a kiss each, and instead led Raven a little way away, toward the Ark, just so they could speak in private.

 

‘So, what’s with the hickey?’ Raven said, arms crossed, her face stoic.

 

‘What?’ Clarke’s hand went to her neck fast, eyes wide.

 

‘Just kidding, Clarke. Because you and Bellamy were out all night. Wow, that was a bit of a reaction,’ Raven’s eyebrows were raised as she analysed Clarke’s stricken expression. ‘Ohh-’

 

‘Shut up,’ Clarke almost growled.

 

‘Seriously? I thought you guys weren’t-’ Raven began, grinning from ear to ear.

 

‘We aren’t… weren’t. I don’t want to talk about it, Raven.’ Clarke interrupted, squirming. They hadn’t been planning for anyone to know yet. Somehow, it was always Raven that managed to find out their secrets. She still kind of knew the August secret, even though she didn’t appear to realise it. Bellamy insisting to Raven early on that August wasn’t his seemed to have been firmly marked down as ‘wilful denial’ and nothing more. 

 

Raven was nodding, looking Clarke up and down with an amused expression. ‘You know, I can see it now, you’re glowing just a little bit.’

 

‘Go float yourself,’ Clarke said dryly. ‘I actually wanted to ask you about this trip with Murphy and whether you’re actually going through with it.’

 

‘Yes!’ Raven said simply and insistently. 

 

‘Okay, well, Bellamy and I talked about it and he thinks he might be able to convince the council to let you take that second rover you’ve been patching up.’ 

 

‘So, how was he? Better than last time?’ Raven folded her arms, and levelled her stance on her good leg.

 

Clarke sighed heavily, speaking through gritted teeth, ‘Please, Raven.’

 

‘Okay, well, at least you have a new implant now. August’s cute and all but-’

 

‘Raven,’ Clarke barked. ‘Can we please talk about this stupid plan of yours.’

 

‘I’m going, Clarke, okay? Tomorrow! And I’m taking that damn rover whether the council likes it or not. I’m the one who fixed it.’ Raven rolled her eyes in her own disgruntled, mocking way, stalking off and leaving Clarke in her wake.

 

It was then that Raven’s words fully sunk in. Clarke drew in a sharp breath. Her eyes flying to inspect tiny scar on her left arm under which her implant was sat. She tried to remember what her mom had told her almost two months ago; the advice she’d brushed off because it didn’t matter because  _ she hadn’t been seeing anyone _ . It was still a few weeks before they’d be able to do the blood-work to tell if her implant was working, and she’d just… she and Bellamy had… 

 

Clarke stuck her hand out to catch herself as she all but fell against the outer wall of the Ark, and started to hyperventilate. She struggled to temper her emotions, not wanting to draw attention to herself. In a sharp hiss she cursed at her own idiocy. Bending over a little, breathing deeply in an attempt to calm herself, Clarke looked over to where Bellamy was chatting happily with August. Suddenly, she felt very much like she was going to throw up.

* * *

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000) 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to give a huge shout-out to my awesome Beta and amazing friend Alina @marvelthismarvelthat because she is literally the reason this story exists and is still going. <3
> 
> The plan is to update every Wednesday until this fic is finished; I realise that the amount I'm going to be moving around in the next month or so is going to make this difficult but the reviews I've had on this fic have inspired me so much. Thank you to all of you who've taken a moment to tell me what it is you love - they really make all the difference and help me decide where to take this story.


	10. And The Moon Cried

 

‘Once upon a time, there was a baby, who came down from the night sky on the back of a shooting star, and landed in the woods.’ Bellamy whispered the story to August. He was propped up by pillows and furs, dressed in his loose night clothes, as he read the story. August was curled up at his chest, his cheek squished adorably against it, listening intently as he chewed on the corner of a blanket.

 

‘The little boy was very, very special. He had the power to make any that saw him, love him.’

 

A small, square book, with a cover made of wood, sheets of canvas captured in-between. The edges had been rounded off and the surfaces smoothed; delicately carved into and carefully painted, each word and image meticulously attended to. They’d decided to indent every single letter and stroke of the brush so even if the paint faded and chipped, the story wouldn’t be lost.

 

‘He cried so loudly that the moon heard him, and saw him lying there all alone amongst the trees. She was so saddened by his tears, she began to cry with him.’

 

Clarke smiled, touching a few fingers to the little moon and star on her necklace.

 

‘Far away, a princess, with long, golden hair, saw these bright tears fall from the face of the moon. So, she took her white horse, and rode the whole night long to find the spot where they fell.’ Bellamy turned the page again.

 

Clarke smiled to see the image Bellamy had made her draw of herself riding a white horse across the pages of the book. Combined, the story had taken a month to complete, but she’d been keeping the oil paints from the mountain just for an occasion like this. The story was the truth, or a version of it, and she liked that they could tell August it this way. He would always know the truth, even if he didn’t fully understand it yet.

 

‘Coming across a moonlit glade, the princess found the baby boy, and at once fell in love with him.’ Bellamy smiled into August hair.

 

August blinked slowly, long, dark lashes gently brushing his chubby, golden cheeks. He was struggling to keep his eyes open.

 

Clarke shuffled closer, resting her head on Bellamy’s shoulder so she could see better.

 

‘The princess took the baby into her arms, and kissed him. Seeing this, the moon smiled, and wiped the tears from her eyes.’ Bellamy ran his thumb over August’s hand where the baby was clasping his forefinger, trying to keep him awake just long enough to hear the end.

 

Clarke turned to the next page for him.

 

‘The princess rode home through the night quickly as she could, bravely fighting off many monsters. She wouldn’t let anyone hurt her baby.’

 

Clarke laughed softly into Bellamy’s shoulder, squeezing his upper arm in a motion of gratitude. Bellamy Blake really was a master storyteller.

 

‘As she finally rode through the gates of her kingdom, the princess was met by her closest friend, a storyteller. He’d been waiting for her. He asked her what it was she held in her arms.’ Bellamy glanced at Clarke out the corner of his eye, smirking at her knowingly as he turned the page. ‘As soon as the storyteller saw the child, he loved him too, just as the princess did.’

 

‘Did the storyteller kiss the princess?’ Clarke murmured, interrupting.

 

Bellamy shushed her. Raising an eyebrow in her direction, he whispered over August’s head, ‘Wait.’

 

Clarke sighed, the corner of her mouth curling upward just a little as she reached out to turn to the next page.

 

‘The princess and the storyteller took the baby into their family, and named him August.’

 

The picture on the current page of an approximation of Clarke and Bellamy smiling down at August in their arms made a lump appear in Clarke’s throat, even if she was the one who’d drawn it.

 

‘Knowing the child was finally safe, the moon smiled peacefully, and closed her eyes to sleep. She laid down behind the trees just as the sun let out the first warm breath of dawn.’

 

Bellamy drew his finger from August’s loosened grip where he slept soundly against Bellamy’s shoulder. He used his recently freed hand to close the book and move it to the stool sat beside the bed. Rising slowly, he held August as carefully as always, and moved over to the cot to lower him in. He tucked him in so gently and lovingly, Clarke found herself almost overwhelmed by it.

 

‘Do you think we would have happened without August?’ She asked softly, her head propped up by her hand as she lay on her side.

 

‘Yes,’ Bellamy responded as he landed back down beside her, eyes fluttering shut as he lay back.

 

‘Really?’ Clarke smoothed her hand over his shirt, her eyebrows knitted tightly together.

 

‘You don’t?’ Bellamy opened his eyes a crack, peering down the bed at her, watching her fiddle with the loose threading at the seams on his sleeve.

 

‘No, I do. It’s just,’ Clarke opened her mouth to continue, faltered, and then managed with a smile, ‘it’s funny. You hated me at the drop ship, remember?’

 

‘You know what they say, Princess; there’s a fine line.’ His eyes glinted mischievously as he drew up and leant over, cradling her jaw with one hand as he kissed her.

 

Clarke was drawn in immediately, unable to turn away, for a moment she allowed herself to kiss him back, and forget the cloud of worry hanging over her. As they pulled each other closer, she scolded herself internally, and sighed, pulling away. ‘Bellamy, we still can’t, um…’

 

He cocked his head at her, eyes flickering over he face, trying to figure out her expression.

 

Clarke winced in embarrassment, feeling the dark ball of stress that she’d pushed deep down into her stomach rise up into her chest.

 

He smiled. ‘I know, I just...’

 

‘In a few days I can get my mom to do the test.’ Clarke swallowed roughly.

 

‘Okay,’ Bellamy said, moistening his lips as he considered something. He leant over again to whisper in her ear, ‘You know... there’s other stuff I can do.’

 

Clarke’s eyes narrowed as he pulled away a bit, bringing his face up to hers. ‘Prove it.’

 

 

* * *

 

 

‘Happy birthday, baby boy,’ Clarke whispered to August as she lifted him out of his crib. ‘Do you know you’re one year old today?’ Truthfully, they didn’t know August’s exact birth date, but he’d been so small when Clarke had found him, she’d just dubbed that day as his birthday. It was the day he’d become ‘August’, so it had been the beginning of him, in some small way.

 

She ignored the fact August wasn’t listening to her, far too busy grasping at her shirt to signal he was hungry. Her mom had suggested she could start weaning him completely, but Clarke didn’t see the point in stopping yet. She enjoyed the time with August, and he only fed once in the morning, and once before bed now, so it wasn’t a hinderance. It calmed him down, and Clarke remembered reading there was evidence it acted as birth control as well, which, with her current situation taken into account, could only be a good thing.

 

Bellamy didn’t wake up until August was already fed, changed, and back in his cot. Clarke saw him stir as she pulled a fresh shirt over her head.

 

Bed hair in full force, he rose up on his elbows, watching her pull her pants on with bleary eyes.

 

‘Why don’t you just move in here?’ Clarke said, all of a sudden.

 

Bellamy looked taken aback, cocking his head in confusion. ‘Thought I already had.’

 

As the day progressed, it became clear Bellamy and Clarke weren’t the only ones to have thought to give August a birthday present. Their friends were generous, between them gifting; a set of wooden building blocks,  a little metal rover that shot across the floor when you pulled it back, a small tower of new clothes, and a slightly larger pair of soft-soled shoes to replace the ones August would grow out of by the end of the summer. Abby had found a book of mythology amongst the things collected from Mount Weather, and gifted it to August, the subtext being that it was a gift for Bellamy as well. Cullan and Gelma sent a charm in the shape of a crescent moon to hang on his cot. Even Lexa sent something; a small hunting knife, engraved with August’s name, ceremonial more than anything… Clarke hoped. Then there was Roan’s gift.

 

‘Who gives a baby a bow and arrow,’ Clarke scoffed. She was attempting to feed a fussy August some kind of vegetable soup for his lunch, but he wasn’t having any of it.

 

‘Well, Roan, apparently,’ Jasper laughed from where he was sat on the other side of the table.

 

‘It’s only a training bow, the arrows aren’t even that sharp,’ Octavia pointed out from where she was sat next to him. ‘I can start teaching him to use one next year, if you like?’

 

Bellamy sent Octavia a scathing look as Clarke shuddered involuntarily.

 

‘I’m still just getting used to him turning one, can we not talk about him turning two.’ Clarke finally managed to get a mouthful on soup into a wriggling August, earning a spate of angry babbling. ‘Did we get a radio from Raven and Murphy today?’ Clarke directed this at Jasper.

 

Jasper shook his head. ‘No, but they did say they’d definitely be heading home this week. I know Raven really didn’t want to miss August’s birthday, so they must have had a breakthrough. Must be Monty and Harper’s calming influence; Monty said when they got there Raven and Murphy were about two insults away from killing each other.’

 

‘That sounds about right,’ Clarke said. With her son turning a year old, it was comforting to know some things would never change, even if that thing was Raven and Murphy’s desire to strangle each other.

 

Bellamy reached over and tried to wipe August’s chin and cheeks where most of his lunch was currently sat, only managing to get about half the remnants off before August started to scream.

 

Clarke cringed, watching heads turn in their direction.

 

Jasper stuck his fingers in his ears, raising his voice above the racket, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s definitely a toddler now!’

 

Clarke had hoped that since August had been such an easy baby, he would be an equally easy toddler. But, day by day, she began to doubt they would be that lucky.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bellamy was sat in the council room listening to Kane talk on and on about food stores and the current harvest of the small farms they’d managed to begin cultivating last year. He was not listening.

 

Clarke had decided to go alone to get the test done. Bellamy hadn’t questioned her on it. He supposed that Clarke hadn’t wanted him there because it would raise suspicion about their relationship again, and recently they’d been pretty good at keeping it under wraps. Besides, if Clarke was pregnant, it might be better that Bellamy wasn’t present. The med bay was full of sharp objects for Abby to hurl at him.

 

Bellamy felt nauseous just thinking about it. He wasn’t ready for that. He knew they were already parents, but with August it had been less complex in some ways. Clarke had never been pregnant, and Bellamy had come into August’s life when he was already one month old. Bellamy was terrified of what could happen; he was no stranger to childbirth. He’d been the only person present when Octavia was born, completely unprepared for the fear and exhaustion in his mother’s face. He’d been so scared she would die, and that’d he’d be left totally alone. He knew these fears were a little irrational, Clarke would have her mom, and Jackson, and they hadn’t lost any of the mothers who’d given birth on the ground yet.

 

Bellamy was also a little ashamed that, when he really thought about it, he was excited at the prospect of having another kid, even if he didn’t want it to happen right now. Timing was the thing. Clarke and he, they’d only really just got started.

 

Clarke was waiting for him when Kane wrapped up and the council began to file out of the room. Bellamy couldn’t help but look at her differently now, and not just because they’d slept together. When he raked his eyes over her, he wasn’t thinking about that. With all the barriers down, it had begun to get so easy for him to be drawn into small movements, like the tilt of her neck, or the rise of her eyebrow. Every time he saw her, he breathed her presence in like she was the first lungful of fresh air he’d ever had.

 

The few seconds it took for the rest of the council to dissipate felt like a lifetime.

 

Bellamy watched intently as Clarke’s lips curled up into a tiny, sad smile, eyes brimming with some kind of truth. He just wasn’t sure yet what that meant. For a second, he worried.

 

She shook her head.

 

Letting out a ragged sigh of relief, Bellamy took the few steps needed to cross the space between them, and wrapped her up in his arms. Smoothing one hand over her hair, he closed his eyes tight, and pressed a firm kiss to the crown of her head.

 

Clarke sunk into him, depending on him to keep her upright.

 

‘For a moment there, I thought…’ Bellamy said breathlessly. He didn’t know how to feel. This was for the best, though. Maybe they would want another baby one day, but right now… Bellamy just wanted to focus on the one they did have.

 

‘Implant is working fine.’ Clarke pulled back and stroked her hands down his chest before bringing them up to capture his jaw, brushing her thumbs over where his beard covered his upper lip and cheeks. ‘And here’s a good chance we have at least four years of it being that way.’

 

Bellamy brought his hands from her hips to capture hers folding them in his grasp. ‘August will be five by then.’

 

‘We’ll be old,’ Clarke offered.

 

‘No, I’ll be old. You’ll be my age,’ Bellamy said incredulously. The fact she thought twenty-four was old was, frankly, hilarious. He supposed it was fairly old for someone who’d once thought they wouldn’t make it to nineteen.

 

Clarke was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t quite place, eyes attentive, her smile impish. ‘Do you still have the key to your bunk?’

 

‘Yeah, why?’

 

‘It’s closer than the cabin,’ she explained, and began to tug him off down the hallway.

 

 

* * *

 

 

August was determined. The strongest, most stubborn, most determined little boy Clarke had ever met. Abby had used the term ‘wilful’, but Clarke preferred ‘determined’.

 

They were in the full heat of the summer when he started standing on his own. By the end of the same week he was very determinedly taking his first wobbly steps out on the grass, fists clenched, nostrils flared; a face like thunder. As soon as he recovered from landing on his well-padded bottom, he was standing back up to try again. Clarke had immediately yelled for Bellamy, and some recruit she didn’t know very well had bolted for the gate to go find him.

 

He got there just in time to see August fall over for a third time. Clarke was crying, wiping streams of tears from her eyes. She wasn’t even sure why. Was she upset? Proud? Happy? Could she mourn the tiny baby she’d pulled from the undergrowth, and still be proud of the little boy walking toward her right now?

 

Bellamy had tried not to laugh at her, but failed. He’d pulled her in close, pressing a kiss to her forehead as she apologised.

 

Another month and August was pretty much running, dancing, and falling over... all of the time. Clarke had lost count of times she’d had to patch up a cut or a scrape in the past few weeks. August had actually managed to turn over a stool in the med bay, and then get himself stuck upside down in it, in the few seconds Clarke had looked away to give Abby something.

 

‘No!’ August yelled.

 

Clarke tried to remove him from her as gently as she could, attempting to forcefully uncurl his arms from around her leg. ‘Come on, August, Mommy’s got to go now. Do it for me?’

 

‘No, Mommy,’ August whined, following this up with some miserable mumbled gibberish, refusing to let go of her.

 

‘You’re gonna have lots of fun with Jasper.’ Clarke said this through gritted teeth, trying to remain calm.

 

Jasper didn’t look so sure. He was standing in the middle of the cabin, a short distance away, with his hands on his hips. ‘Hey, August.’

 

August didn’t acknowledge him, too preoccupied with pouting and digging his nails into Clarke’s leg.

 

‘If you come hang out with me today, I’ll let you wear my goggles,’ Jasper tried.

 

August gasped. His little face lit up immediately as head spun around to look in Jasper’s direction. He loosened his hold on Clarke, and reached out a hand to Jasper, the other still firmly attached to Clarke’s leg. August refused to fully release her until the goggles were tightened in place on his head, and even then, it was very reluctantly. Smiling proudly, his curls stuck out around the goggles in a brilliantly mad fashion that made both Jasper and Clarke smile.

 

‘Thank Uncle Jasper,’ Clarke reminded him.

 

August responded eagerly, gripping the goggles with both hands as if to make sure no one could take them from him, ‘thanks.’

 

Clarke knelt in front of him, capturing his face, she peppered kisses over his nose and brow as he laughed. ‘Love you.’

 

She wasn’t sure what it was Raven wanted to speak to her about, but she wasn’t feeling great about it. Raven had been coming and going from the lab for months now; at first, she’d been so optimistic. They’d discovered a bunch of medical supplies and helpful equipment there. Monty and Raven had been able to get all the information off the computers there, thought a lot of it had been encrypted. Deemed low priority, they’d been slowly making their way through it ever since.

 

Abby had been keen to visit the lab ever since the first batch of new medical supplies had arrived with Raven and Murphy. She’d insisted on it, leaving Jackson and Clarke to man the med bay for a week.

 

Since then, something had shifted. Raven and Murphy had returned from the lab a few days ago with a couple of grounders in tow, and very little to report. Something unspoken hanging in their air like a bad smell, or smoke obscuring an unspoken truth. It didn’t take a genius to figure out something was wrong.

 

Clarke arrived at Raven’s workshop with her fists clenched. Raven, Bellamy, Abby, Murphy, and a pair of grounders Clarke didn’t recognise were all present already, seemingly waiting for her.

 

‘Hey,’ Clarke greeted Bellamy as she sidled up to him, smiling at the others. ‘Sorry, I know I’m late; August wouldn’t let me leave.’

 

No one said anything, but Bellamy reached out to her, and put his arm loosely around her, pulling her into him just a little. He usually didn’t show her affection like this when they were in front of people, especially when Abby was among those people, so Clarke was a little baffled. She tried to read his face, to figure out what the small dent between his brows meant, but she couldn’t. All she knew is it wasn’t good.

 

‘Um, Clarke, you haven’t met Emori, right?’ Murphy gestured to the pretty grounder girl with the face tattoo that was behind him, sat in the extra office chair Raven wasn’t occupying, arms firmly crossed. ‘And this is her brother, Otan.’

 

The girl, Emori, nodded respectfully at Clarke, though her expression was still stern. Her brother, whose face was largely obscured by a cloth he was wearing over his nose and mouth, raised a hand in greeting.

 

‘Nice to meet you,’ Clarke said, because it felt like the thing to say. The pair looked a little unsure of her, so it was hard not to feel the same way back. Though she’d heard a lot about them, Raven and Murphy had never brought members of the island clan back with them before. It only served to make Clarke feel even more uneasy.

 

‘Raven,’ Abby finally spoke, too quietly, almost mournfully, ‘could you get Clarke up to speed please.’

 

‘Right,’ Raven began, ‘Clarke, as you know we’ve been decrypting the files we found at the lab. One of them was about,’ she shared a look with Murphy and Emori, ‘...Praimfaya. There was one that talked about the fallout of the second Fukushima disaster. How a bunch of self-sustaining mega-reactors were built. They were strong enough to survive the first nuclear apocalypse, but they weren’t meant to last forever.’

 

‘First nuclear apocalypse?’ Clarke said softly.

 

Raven spun around in her chair, bringing up a series of graphs on her screens, resting her finger to travel up the gently curved, ascending line on one of them. ‘This is the rise in levels of radiation in the past month.’

 

‘The nuclear reactors are breaking down, Clarke,’ Bellamy’s eyes were heavy with everything from anger to guilt to sorrow. ‘In a month people will start getting sick. In a few months-’

 

‘We’ll all be dead,’ Murphy said in matter-of-fact manner. ‘Raven says at some point there’s going to be a wave of radiation strong enough to kill pretty much everyone and everything left on the surface of the planet. Earth won’t be survivable for years.’

 

Mostly what Clarke felt in that moment was disbelief, but then, soon enough, came anger. She had been through hell to get here, fought so hard to build something. They all had, and now it was all going to be ripped away again. She looked to Bellamy, her jaw clenched, trying to communicate to him that she wasn’t ready to give up.

 

‘We’ll find a way to survive. We always do,’ he whispered to her.

 

‘Yeah, don’t be such a dick, Murphy,’ Raven said. ‘We’ve still got a chance. Monty and I think we might be able to get Mount Weather ready in time. Maybe. Though, even then, we’re going to have to be fairly dependant on the hydrofarm not being knocked out by this death wave…’

 

‘How many people would that save?’ Clarke asked.

 

‘A couple of the upper levels have been compromised so if we can’t make them liveable,’ Raven swallowed roughly, ‘five-hundred, at a push.’

 

Clarke pursed her lips as she controlled her breathing. ‘We can do better than that. We have to.’

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke was with August, sat alone by the fire after dinner, content just to hold him as he slept. She could feel the little, even puffs of warm breath against her shoulder as she sat on the ground, leaning against a log with her head thrown back to stare at the night sky. No one bothered her. It was if everyone just knew to leave her alone tonight, and she was grateful for it.

 

Clarke felt uneven. She felt robbed. Mount Weather might save everyone at Arkadia, but it didn’t feel like enough. How did she make sure that Octavia, Lincoln, Indra, Lexa, Gelma, Cullan, even Roan, ...everyone she cared for that wasn’t here, made it as well. How did she protect them? She felt like she could barely protect August. She’d hoped he’d never have to be anything but free. She didn’t want him locked away under a floor, but she might not have a choice. She couldn’t lose him… above all else she couldn’t lose him.

 

Clarke had forgotten the month until she saw them. She’d started measuring months in how old her son was, rather than the changes in the seasons. But then, the stars started flying, and riding down to earth right in front of her eyes. Much brighter than she’d seen the night she’d found August, these filled the sky, building and building in magnitude. Gelma had promised her, that night over a year ago, that when August came she would see them, but three months after that August had come and gone with no sign of the shooting stars Gelma called ‘Pain gon Natshana’ and Bellamy called the ‘Perseids’. Perhaps the weather hadn’t been right, or Clarke had slept through them. She hadn’t thought on it in a long time. It felt like a sign that she was seeing them now. It was like the universe had known she needed something to make a wish on tonight.

 

‘Oh my god,’ Clarke muttered to herself, watching in awe as the phenomenon she’d named her son for danced up above her. Tears welling in her eyes made the stars and the moon blur, the whole sky lit up with bright light. She heard distant exclamations as others looked up. A couple of tears fell from her chin, and landed on August’s cheek.

 

‘Mommy,’ August murmured sleepily. Stretching his chubby limbs out and peering up at the sky, his eyes widened in recognition. ‘Mommy, Moon sad.’ He looked heartbroken at the notion.

 

Clarke let out a shuddering breath as she look down into his huge, dark eyes. She could see the stars reflected in them, and so she just watched August watch the night sky, and let the tears fall.

 

* * *

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000) 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked me why Pike isn't in this fic and what happened to him and honestly... this is my imagined canon-divergent reality with which I can so what I like, and I did not want to deal with his bullshit. He's dead. I don't know how or why but he's dead in this fic.


	11. Not A Last Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The search for a way to save the human race commences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say, as a writer, I'm so mad at Bob and Eliza... I'm never gonna come up with a plot twist that good. 
> 
> Apologies to those of you I promised to that I would have this up yesterday - I fell asleep at eight o'clock. I fully blame jet-lag... I've been in four countries in as many months and I'm headed to a fifth tomorrow! Hopefully I get to write on the train and next chapter should be up Wednesday next week.

‘Bellamy, can you just...,’ Murphy’s voice was tired and just a little smarmy. He trailed off, but Bellamy had already guessed where it was headed. ‘ _ Bellamy, shut up and listen’ _ .

 

It was a massive effort just not to snap at each other every time they spoke at this point. Bellamy, Murphy, Emori and her brother, Otan, had been away from Arkadia for a solid week, searching for bunkers used in praimfaya. Mount Weather wasn’t looking viable for more than a few hundred people, and they all knew keeping this news from the other clans was not a possibility or something they could live with. Bellamy was very aware that Octavia would never take shelter in the bunker if Lincoln couldn’t come too. 

 

Bellamy watched as Murphy pointed off to the north a little. ‘There. See that dip. Get us close.’

 

Bellamy let out a long breath. ‘You sure?’ Last two times they’d pulled over there had been no sign of anything. In one week they’d found nothing more than an overgrown sinkhole where a bunker maybe had been once upon a time.

 

‘Obviously the terrain has changed a bit, but the coordinates match so, yeah, this is where the cabin was,’ Murphy said through gritted teeth. 

 

Emori reached from her seat in the back of the rover to squeeze Murphy’s shoulder, silently reminding him to stay calm. It definitely wouldn’t be the first time this trip Murphy had blown up at Bellamy. 

 

Bellamy did as he was bid and pulled up at the side of the dip, tiredly scuffing the back of his boots against the side of the rover as he swung his feet out. He was overtired constantly. He found it hard to sleep these days, insomnia plaguing him. He knew Clarke had noticed, though she didn’t say anything… she was pretty much the same. They knew what kept them awake. Sometimes he’d wake up to find her sat on the end of the bed, carefully and silently watching August sleep soundly in his crib. It was some cruel irony that their one-year-old slept through the night better than they did.

 

Emori took point as they moved down the ridge. Bellamy’s stomach twisted up into a knot; they already knew they wouldn’t be able to save everyone, there were too many grounders, but maybe, just maybe, they had a chance to save a few hundred, or even a thousand, if they were lucky.

 

Clarke wanted to be the one to tell Lexa. They hadn’t yet, waiting to see if they could find a viable bunker to bargain with if they needed to. It had been Kane’s suggestion; that if there was another bunker out there, they needed to be in control of it in order to hold Mount Weather. As soon as Bellamy arrived home, they were leaving again for Polis… originally they’d thought it would be just him and Clarke this time, but August had reacted so badly to Bellamy leaving, that they both feared how abandoned he would feel if they both disappeared from his life for a month. He was young enough for a month to feel like a lifetime.

 

Bellamy and Clarke both knew there was another reason they couldn’t leave him behind, though neither would admit it; if by some cruel twist of fate these were their last few months, they sure as hell weren’t going to throw away an entire month with their son.

 

‘This is it!’ Emori’s voice rippled through the air around the group like a shock wave. 

 

Bellamy had gotten so used to failure, the words didn’t even make sense to him for a moment. A second later, as he watched Murphy whoop and hug Emori, they sunk in. 

 

He shouted as he ran down the bank toward them, ‘You find the entrance?’ 

 

‘Stairs,’ Emori said breathlessly.

 

Bellamy knelt to touched was now appeared to be the first of a set of concrete steps leading down into darkness, muttering to himself, ‘Okay… here we go.’ 

 

‘Flashlight,’ Murphy offered one from his pack.

 

‘Thanks,’ Bellamy nodded at him as he rose and accepted it. Flicking it on he gripped it in one hand and clenched his other in a tight fist, descending into the murky cavity. The air around them became cold and uninviting. There was something untouched and unsettling about this place Bellamy didn’t pay too much attention to, too convinced this was their salvation. 

 

Bellamy held out a hand to push through a large cobweb that had grown over the entryway. He sighed seeing how the place was so overgrown it was hard to even make out where the walls were, vines twisting their way into the cracks and more cobwebs caught in the corners. All four of them were now coated in webs, pursing their lips and screwing up their noses against the stagnant, earthy smell. 

 

‘Oh that’s either a very good or a very bad sign,’ Murphy’s voice echoed a little.

 

All three of the others turned to see where his flashlight was trained on a skeleton, leant up against the wall, gleaming in the white light with an unsettling grin on it’s face.

 

Otan shuddered beside Bellamy, his tone low and grim, ‘What if no one ever made it inside?’

 

Bellamy crouched to search the skeleton for clues as to who they were or what they’d been doing here, the beam from his flashlight reflecting off something on the ground nearby. He reached out a took it in his hand. It was a circular plate of metal, like a large coin, imprinted with a phrase around the rim.

 

‘From the ashes, we will rise?’ Bellamy read aloud, and held it up for Murphy to take. ‘What is this?’

 

‘Kom folau, oso na gyon op,’ Emori said, pensive. ‘I’ve heard that before.’

 

Murphy ran a thumb over the markings on the seal, and turned it over to read the roman numerals on the back. ‘I think these were given to the members of the cult that built the bunker. This guy must have come here to try to get in but...’

 

‘So it is here somewhere?’ Bellamy rationalised. 

 

‘This seal only has an eleven on it, look.’ Murphy ignored Bellamy’s question. He looked unsettled. ‘Everything about Cadogan’s cult said you had to have a twelve to get in.’

 

‘Explains why he’s out here, and not in there.’ Emori was stood facing away from them, flashlight trained so a section of the wall that looked very much like a door. 

 

Otan approached it first, ripping away the vines that covered it, looking for a way to get it open.

 

‘What if there’s still people in there? If we open it will they die?’ Bellamy wondered aloud. 

 

‘If we  _ don’t _ open it, a load more people are gonna die,’ Murphy responded pointedly.

 

Otan pounded on the door, once, and then twice.

 

‘We’re not going to be able to get in anyway,’ Murphy said through gritted teeth, checking the seal on the door for signs it had been opened recently, ‘it was designed to only be opened from the inside.’ 

 

‘Or from the outside…’ Bellamy began, the other’s turning to look at him, ‘by someone with a rover.’

 

It took them two hours to get everything together in order for them to rip the door open, careful to do as little damage as possible, trying to minimize the damage Raven would probably have to fix. 

 

Bellamy gritted his teeth and slammed his hands on the wheel in victory when the door finally came away and he heard the others whooping and yelling in celebration from down in the pit. Flinging the door open he jogged down, descending into what once had been no more than a dank old basement to see if this was their salvation. 

 

The others were stood stock still, breathing heavily, staring into the gap in the wall.

 

‘Shit,’ Murphy summed up.

 

‘What?’ Bellamy nudged them all aside to get a good look. ‘Oh,’ he breathed out, his tone shaky. 

 

‘Good news is, I don’t think us opening the door is what killed them,’ Murphy said.

 

It was a bunker, and it looked easily big enough to house a thousand people, just not from a nuclear apocalypse. A sea of bones, a fair amount of skeletons almost entirely intact, untouched and unseen for a hundred years, stretched out across a concrete floor. Bellamy stepped forward through the threshold, then stopped as if hitting an invisible wall. Against a pillar to his right, he looked once, then twice, one of the skeletons curled up, so small, at the base of it. Alone.

 

He saw August in his mind’s eye. Afraid and alone curled up on a concrete floor. Bellamy saw him like that a lot… in his dreams. His nightmares.

 

Bellamy gulped. He’d seen so much death already, but this was different. He needed to leave. ‘I think we should go home now,’ he said, low and gruff. None of them spoke as they left, turning their backs on the dead. 

 

* * *

 

Clarke had been treating radiation poisoning in the med bay for weeks now. Grounders coming to Skaikru when they had  nowhere else to go. How long would it be before Clarke could no longer protect August? He hadn’t been born in space, he didn’t have the protection of her and Bellamy’s altered DNA. He didn’t have the blood to survive this for as long as they did. 

 

The sound of the rover rolling through the gates was one Clarke couldn’t miss, having been listening out for it for the last week, wondering what was taking Bellamy and the others so long. 

 

She ran to him as he clambered out, throwing her arms around him. Her lips formed a smile she pressed them into his neck.

 

He wrapped his arms around her waist and squeezed, lifting her off her feet for a brief moment. ‘Hey,’ he managed to get out.

 

‘Hey,’ she breathed out against his skin.

 

‘Miss me?’ He murmured, somewhat predictably. 

 

‘I’m not the only one.’

 

Bellamy let out an amused hum as they pulled apart. Their eyes met and he saw the question in Clarke’s eyes. His face fell and he shook his head in response.

 

She sucked in a harsh, short breath, glancing mournfully across the others to read their expressions. ‘Okay… well,’ she licked her lips, leaning close into him to whisper, ‘we might have something else.’ 

 

The others watched, bemused, as Clarke tugged Bellamy by the hand across the grass and into the main structure of Arkadia. She led him straight to med bay, guiding him into the supply closet. She ushered out two very scandalised volunteers and closed the door behind them with a huff.

 

‘If you wanted to get me alone, Clarke… we already have a room.’ 

 

She shushed him. Pushing him aside, she knelt at a small fridge behind him and pulled out a small vial of black liquid, ‘do you know what this is?’

 

Bellamy shook his head, his brow furrowed.

 

‘Nightblood,’ Clarke all but laughed, rolling her eyes to herself. ‘I mean it had to have some purpose, right? I can’t believe we didn’t consider this before.’

 

‘Clarke?’ Bellamy urged her to elaborate.

 

‘Floukru. About a day or two after they arrived with the radiation poisoning, my mom mentioned Luna was getting better. She has this… this ability to metabolise radiation. Radiation so bad that it was killing all her people, and there is only one clear way that Luna is very different to all of them.’ 

 

Abby and Clarke had spoken in hushed tones about it at length, telling no one but Raven, who’d been due to head back to the lab across the water, asking her to bring back any files the lab might have on blood modification. If this Doctor Franco had been part of the effort to save the world, maybe she had something to do with the extreme blood modification found in a small number of the grounders.

 

‘How does this help us?’ Bellamy asked, taking the vial from Clarke to get a better look.

 

‘I transferred Luna’s bone marrow into one of the Floukru children and gave her multiple blood transfusions with Luna’s blood. It saved her life Bellamy, and she’s a night blood too now. Both Raven and I have spent every spare second we have sorting through the old medical articles and staring at this stuff through a microscope. There are clear signs of it being an engineered substance. Someone came up with this in a lab the first time round, and I think maybe… we have access to the very lab they did it in.’ 

 

‘As in,  _ the  _ lab? The one where Raven and Monty are, right now.’ Bellamy almost laughed.

 

‘Raven has found stuff like EKGs, IV tubing, defibrillators, infusion pumps, spill kits, I mean,’ Clarke huffed, throwing her hands up, ‘that’s the kind of stuff you would usually have only found on a cardiology ward. This Doctor Franco was obviously altering blood… that seems like a hell of a coincidence.’

 

‘So, you think maybe she left records on how to make night bloods?’

 

‘On a grand scale. I’m just hoping that… because August-’

 

‘Is he okay?’ Bellamy said, interrupting, putting a hand on Clarke’s shoulder. 

 

‘He’s fine,’ Clarke reassured him, lowering her voice. ‘But he’s a grounder, Bellamy. He has the same amount of protection as the Floukru kids I just watched…’ She trailed off, eyes downcast. 

 

‘Are you still going to Polis?’ 

 

‘No, I have to go to the lab. But you’re going to go to Polis. Tomorrow. Take August with you, the radiation levels are lower there. If and when I have a way to make the blood I’ll follow you… if not, I’ll head straight for Mount Weather and meet you there.’

 

‘Clarke,’ Bellamy whispered, dissent evident in the low tone of his voice.

 

‘Please. You have to keep him safe. Take him, find Octavia, and get them both there.’

 

Bellamy placed his hands on her cheeks, forcing her to look up at him, shaking his head so slowly and mournfully. ‘I’m not leaving you behind.’

 

‘You’re not,’ Clarke responded firmly. She rested her hands, and then her forehead on his chest. After a moment of silence he melted into him. ‘I can look after myself. You need to do this, for August.’

 

* * *

 

‘No!’ August shook his little head so hard Bellamy was almost worried he would pass out.

 

‘Mommy has to go, okay?’ Clarke’s heart was breaking. She took August’s face in her hands as Bellamy held him sat between them on the bed. ‘I have to go help Auntie Raven and Uncle Monty.’

 

‘No, Mommy. Stay. Stay.’ August whined, pouting and crying. Genuine, streaming tears, rolling down his tawny, chubby cheeks just the same way they had been the first time she’d laid eyes on him.

 

‘I love you so, so much,’ Clarke told him pressing multiple kisses to his nose, her heart in her throat.

 

‘Pease,’ August hiccuped, sniffling. His voice became even more desperate and quiet, ‘Pease, Mommy.’

 

‘You’re gonna be a good boy, okay? I’ll be home as quickly as I can.’ Clarke was desperately trying not to fall apart in front of him. Trying not to make this feel like a last goodbye, because it wasn’t. It wasn’t.

 

August was still shaking a little, eyes red from crying, bottom lip protruding.

 

Clarke breathed in sharply, immediately looking up to share this with Bellamy. August was making it utterly impossible for them to prepare him for her leaving.

 

Swallowing roughly, Clarke said, ‘Let's read your bedtime story, okay? We’ll all read it together.’

 

August didn’t respond excitedly to this the way he normally did, and continued to stare her down with mournful, deep brown eyes. Bloodshot, with wet, long, dark lashes that smudged tears across his cheeks when he blinked.

 

‘I’ll get it,’ Bellamy said quietly. Leaving August sat cross-legged alone in the middle of the bed.

 

He was long-limbed for his age, but still carrying his baby-fat, his pudgy, dimpled hands clenched in his lap. Clarke had eventually agreed with Abby that she could shape his hair a bit, so August now had a set of bangs Clarke was forever pushing out of his eyes. 

 

Clarke shuffled closer. Stroking back August’s curls from his forehead. Tears were still sat on his cheeks and so she took her sleeve and wiped them away. ‘I will always do everything I can to come home to you. I promise.’

 

* * *

 

August was still asleep, watched over by Jasper, when Bellamy walked Clarke to stables in the early morning. Bellamy readied Selene for the journey as Clarke checked her bags one last time. The mist sat low to the ground today, obscuring the horizon, and there was a keener chill in the wind than there had been the day before.

 

‘When do you leave for Polis?’ Clarke asked, needing to break the silence. 

 

‘I think we’ll leave tomorrow. No time to waste. I’m pretty useless here so-’

 

‘Bellamy,’ Clarke smiled sadly at him, ‘you’re never  _ useless _ .’

 

They walked in silence to the gates, but as they neared them Clarke slowed and took Bellamy’s hand gently in hers. ‘I need you to promise me that...’ she didn’t finish her thought.

 

‘Anything.` Bellamy placed a hand on her shoulder, and searched for her eyes with his own. 

 

Clarke’s eyes met his, finally. They were a little cold, a little fierce. ‘You put him first, no matter what, Bellamy, you keep him alive.’ 

 

Bellamy was taken aback. She had to know he would die before letting anyone or anything hurt August.

 

She continued, ‘Don’t try to be a hero this time, okay? You have such a big heart Bellamy, it’s what got you here, and I’m so glad it did, but now you have to think with your head.’

 

‘I have you for that,’ Bellamy’s voice was raw and soft, the words manifesting and rising up from somewhere deep inside his chest.

 

Clarke let out a shuddering breath. ‘But if something happens to-’ 

 

‘It won’t,’ Bellamy interjected dangerously, his jaw was trembling with the effort of not yelling at her for even suggesting that. 

 

‘Please. Just promise.’ Clarke gritted her teeth as she blinked away tears.

 

‘I promise.’ Bellamy gripped her shoulder tighter.

 

She fell into him, wrapping her arms around him as far as she could reach, and pressing her face into his chest. She breathed him in through ragged breaths. 

 

He held her back, grasping her hair and placing a kiss to her temple, lingering there a moment.

 

Bellamy whispered earnestly, ‘You could forget all of this, Clarke. Come to Polis with us to get Octavia. We’ll send for everyone else when we get to Mount Weather. August needs you. I… I need you.’

 

Clarke pulled back and cupped his jaw in her hands, stroking her thumbs over his cheekbones, she sighed. ‘Bellamy, if there’s a chance I can save everyone, I have to try.’

 

* * *

 

Travelling with a clingy toddler who is missing his mother ended up being one of the most emotionally exhausting experiences of Bellamy’s life, which was really saying something considering how his life was going so far. August cried, almost constantly, when he wasn’t busy sleeping or eating, and even sometimes during those things as well. The hardest part of all this being Bellamy couldn’t help him; he couldn’t magic up a Clarke to comfort him. After a week, August did start to calm down a bit, but suddenly would not let Bellamy out of his sight. Bellamy couldn’t even go to the toilet without having a little companion, which before had always been an issue only Clarke had faced.

 

‘Daddy,’ August garbled, ‘mommy bring present?’ Or at least Bellamy thought that was what he was saying, even though that didn’t make any real sense, at least it was english. To anyone else everything he said still sounded like gibberish.

 

‘You mean you want her to bring you a present?’ Bellamy asked.

 

‘Yes,’ August decided. 

 

‘What do you want?’ Bellamy kept up the conversation as he tried to coax a pair of shoes onto August’s feet.

 

‘Want Mommy,’ August said solemnly.

 

‘Hey, how about we go see Lexa and Auntie Octavia? That’ll be fun, right?’ This distraction worked, kind of.

 

It took twice as long for them to get to Lexa’s quarters since August insisted on walking, which he was great at now, but couldn’t do very quickly. Bellamy endured five minutes of walking with him, a few of his fingers clutched in August’s grasp, before asking if August wanted to ride on his shoulders. He didn’t want to be in a rush. If the world was ending, he was going to spend every last minute he had above ground squeezing the joy out, but everyone else wasn’t on exactly the same page, and still expected him to turn up to important meetings on time.

 

Bellamy was ten minutes late, arriving with August wrapped around his face and neck. He removed one of August’s chubby hands from over his eye before greeting everyone, ‘Morning.’

 

‘Morning!’ August mimicked.

 

It was hard for even someone as thick-skinned as Lexa to not smile at that. 

 

‘How’s your wound looking?’ Bellamy asked. It had been a year now, so Bellamy was sure it was now no more than one of many scars, but it seemed like a good ice-breaker.

 

‘Long forgotten, thank you.’ Lexa nodded curtly. ‘How is your son?’

 

‘Missing his mom,’ Octavia piped up, sighing heavily. She’d seen one too many tantrums in the last few days.

 

Bellamy shushed her as quickly as he could. ‘Please don’t set him off again.’ He looked to where Indra was stood close to Octavia. ‘Indra do you think you could take August for a while?’

 

Indra looked from August to Bellamy, and nodded. ‘Of course.’ She addressed the toddler, her tone softening, ‘How would you like to see the hall of the commanders?’

 

Bellamy lifted August off his shoulders and set him on the ground where Indra could take his hand. 

 

‘Daddy come?’ 

 

‘I’ve got to stay here. You go look at the skeletons,’ Bellamy filled his tone with all the composure and elation he wasn’t feeling, and none of the doubt that he was.

 

‘Skeldon?’ August seemed interested.

 

‘Come,  _ goufa _ .’ Indra tugged August’s hand gently, and guided him out the door as Bellamy waved them off, smiling. 

 

As soon as the door shut, the smile was gone. ‘Okay, we only have a maximum of twenty minutes before he throws a tantrum so we need to talk quickly.’

 

‘Where’s Clarke?’ Lexa said, probably wondering why the hell Bellamy had turned up out of the blue without her.

 

‘Clarke is… that’s kind of what we need to speak about.’ Bellamy gestured for the three of them to sit, and cleared his throat before beginning; before beginning to try to explain how the world was going to end. 

 

There was a lengthy silence after he finished. Lexa eventually broke it, after a good minute of them watching her slowly process the news.

 

‘How many did you say the mountain can house?’

 

‘Monty’s been saying four-hundred, maybe five-hundred at a push,’ Bellamy crossed his arms tight across his chest.

 

‘But Skaikru will fill almost all the spots in the mountain,’ Octavia thought aloud in a low, careful voice. It was obvious from her expression she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

 

Lexa rose, staring out through her window across Polis, and all that would soon be ash and rubble. ‘You still haven’t explained why Clarke isn’t here.’

 

‘She’s not here because there might be another solution. One that could save everyone.’ Bellamy uncrossed his arms and began wringing his hands instead. ‘It’s a long-shot, more of a theory really, but it’s all we have right now.’

 

Octavia was looking to Bellamy as well now, not yet aware of this part of the plan.

 

‘And what is it? This ‘long-shot’?’ Lexa seemed shaken, or at the very least less self-assured than usual. 

 

It made Bellamy very uneasy. Lexa’s general aura of pride and self-aggrandisation, whilst slightly annoying, tended to be fairly reassuring. Seeing it damaged was really ramming home that this situation was real. 

 

‘Night blood.’ Bellamy said simply. ‘It can filter higher levels of radiation, more than even Skaikru’s blood can. Much higher. Though it wouldn’t be likely to stop you getting vapourised in the initial meltdown if you were out in the open… it means you could survive on whatever world it leaves behind.’

 

‘I guess you can breathe easy then, huh?’ Octavia said to Lexa, an only slightly confrontational, smarmy smile on her face.

 

‘How does this help my people?’ Lexa ignored Octavia.

 

‘Night blood wasn’t evolution, it was synthesised by a scientist, your ancestor, in anticipation of Praimfaya. If Clarke can figure out how they did it, then we won’t have to hide underground for five years. Hell, we won’t have to hide underground for more than a day, and we can all live.’

 

* * *

 

‘Hey, you getting sleepy?’ Bellamy rocked his son in his arms by the window. He’d been sat there telling him stories the way he had when Clarke had been here with them, over a year ago now. Back when the world hadn’t be ending and the worst thing Bellamy had to worry about was how he was going to tell Clarke he thought he might be in love with her. 

 

August made a noise that sounded like a no, even though his eyelids were drooping.

 

Bellamy kissed his forehead, before looking out the window again, up to the stars, musing that somewhere up there the ring from Arkadia still sat, the part Clarke had lived on once, when her father and Wells were still alive and a good, if slightly boring life was fully within her grasp. He wondered if she ever looked up and thought about that too. He wondered if she had any regrets she didn't voice.

 

Sleeping in the bed behind him felt so wrong without Clarke beside him. Every morning he woke up alone felt like a bucket of ice water to the soul. But eventually, he had to sleep, and so he placed August in his cot, pressing a kiss to his head, and crawled under the sheets of his own bed, curling up small as he could. 

 

He woke to Octavia stood over August, which scared the shit out of him. Being half asleep and seeing a dark figure standing over your baby will do that.

 

After sitting bolt upright with a sharp intake of breath he quickly realised who it was. ‘Octavia,’ Bellamy put a hand to his chest in relief, heart pounding, ‘please, don’t do that to me.’

 

‘Sorry, I know, I’m hovering.’ Octavia lifted August out of his cot and came to sit on the edge of the bed with him. ‘Nothing better to do. I’ve just been thinking about… everything.’

 

‘Hm?’ Bellamy prompted her to go on, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

 

‘How do you expect Lexa to pick a hundred of her people to live out of thousands?’ Octavia didn’t look at him, occupying herself with gazing at August and running her fingers through his hair as he sucked on a fist. 

 

Bellamy opened his mouth and shut it again, before he came to an answer, choosing the most honest one, ‘I don’t know.’

 

‘Are we sure there’s nothing else?’ Octavia looked a little nauseous. 

 

‘You mean another bunker we haven’t found yet?’ 

 

‘Yeah. I just don’t understand how… how the grounders ancestors survived if there wasn’t-’

 

‘From the ashes, we will rise,’ Bellamy interrupted, very suddenly realising something he knew deep down he should have realised weeks ago. ‘Emori said she knew it. She'd heard it before.’

 

‘So?’ 

 

‘So,’ Bellamy threw off the covers and stood, pulling on a pair of pants as he continued to speak, ‘so, the second dawn cult are the grounder’s ancestors. Which means that the bunker we found-’

 

‘Might not have been the only bunker,’ Octavia finished for him, eyes wide with hope, she began to smile. ‘You think we’ll be able to find it?’ 

 

Bellamy pulled on a fresh shirt and ran a hand through his hair. Coming back over to her, he took August. Balancing him at his side, he brushed August’s hair out his eyes and looked into them, seeing a glint of recognition in them he’d begun to see more and more of late. His son was growing up, and Bellamy would be damned if he didn't try everything he could to make sure the world August knew was the best version possible. ‘We at least have to try. If it’s as big as the one we found before, we could save a thousand people, maybe more.’

 

* * *

 

‘Okay, but where would  _ you  _ put one?’

 

Jasper lifted his gaze from the map under his hands, and raised an eyebrow at Bellamy. ‘You do know that I’m a chemist… not an engineer, or a geographer, or a-’ 

 

‘Humor me, Jasper, okay?’

 

‘Okay, well, we know the other bunker was placed in soft but gravelly kind of earth right? So, it makes sense the other bunker is built into a similar landscape.’ Jasper threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘In that case… I don’t know. Well, this map is hard to make sense of it’s so old, but it looks like your best best is somewhere in this region.’ He took a dark pen and drew a huge circle on the old pre-praimfaya map Lexa had given them. 

 

Bellamy winced. 

 

Jasper continued, unfazed, ‘There’s a very good chance they would have built into the sand along the coastal plain.’ 

 

‘Jasper, what the hell, you’ve just circled half the map,’ Octavia hissed.

 

‘I’m just trying to be real with you here.’

 

Bellamy sighed, putting his head in his hands where he was sat at the table, rubbing his eyes roughly, trying to relieve some of the pressure he was feeling from being so sleep-deprived.

 

‘Alright, honestly?' Jasper gestured at them with the pen. 'Stop thinking about where geologically it should be, and start thinking about where a cult leader would put a bunker he’s trying to keep secret.’

 

Both Bellamy and Octavia stared back at him blankly. 

 

Jasper sighed. ‘You guys really need to read some Haruki Murakami. Okay, so, if I was a cult leader and I was trying to keep a bunker really secret… then I’d put it here.’ Jasper drew a much smaller circle on the map, gestured with a flourish of the hand, then looked from Octavia to Bellamy pointedly, waiting for them to react.

 

‘Where’s that?’

 

Octavia ran her fingers over the map, trying to make sense of it, brow furrowed. ‘That’s… that’s Polis.’

 

‘My theory? I think maybe the first bunker was deliberately sabotaged. It really makes no sense that they would manage to make one viable bunker and one non-viable one. They would have been built identically. So… maybe this Cadogan guy was a real bastard, and only a very select number of top-tier cultists got access to the real bunker. It would have been fairly easy to build a bunker secretly in the middle of a city. The more people, the busier everyone is, the less they pay attention. Agro was always packed. It’s why Monty and I managed to stay under the radar for so long.’

 

Bellamy breathed out, coming to a conclusion. ‘So, what? It’s under our feet right now?’ 

 

‘We can find out. There’s some pretty easy ways to check for hollow spaces underground, so I’ll start on that. You both need to talk to some grounders, see if they have any information, stories about praimfaya might help us find the front door. No good finding the bunker if we can’t get into it.’

 

'Agreed, you two get on that, right now. I need to radio Clarke,' Bellamy decided. 

 

* * *

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000) 

* * *

 

 


	12. All The Stars Fall Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With almost everyone else at the lab, Bellamy witnesses the chaos taking place in Polis, occupied by only one goal: finding a way to keep August safe the way he promised Clarke he would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. The eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed this chapter is a cool 12,000 words long. I did think about splitting it in half, but I just couldn't. 
> 
> The working title for this chapter was legitimately 'Bellamy and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week', so... you're welcome.

Bellamy wasn’t with August when it began.

 

Bellamy would think later that they should have been smarter; ready to defend Mount Weather should another clans find out about the oncoming end of the world, but Azgeda outnumbered Skaikru ten to one, at least.

 

A grimacing Octavia burst into Bellamy and Kane’s latest meeting with Lexa to tell them what had happened.

 

‘How many did we lose?’ Kane asked after a long moment of stunned silence.

 

‘We had almost two-hundred people there,’ Bellamy offered, taking a seat and running a hand through his hair.

 

‘And we don’t know how many got out,’ Octavia added.

 

‘At least all our medical staff is here,’ Kane quickly tried to find the silver lining, as little of one as there was. ‘We can’t afford to lose any of them.’

 

‘How did Azgeda even know about this?’ Lexa hissed, ‘I’ve told none of the ambassadors.’

 

‘They have spies, good ones,’ Kane pointed out. ‘We’ve been mobilising resources, lots of them. That’s hard to hide. Azgeda must have gotten wind of it.’

 

‘What do we do in the meantime? People are dead. People are scared. Even if this new bunker you say you might have found pans out, Skaikru can’t be seen to do nothing.’ Octavia voiced all their fears.

 

Kane took issue with this. ‘We can’t waste resources fighting for the mountain! We don’t have the manpower. We might have just lost half our people.’

 

Bellamy considered all this a moment. ‘Is Prince Roan in Polis?’

 

‘Yes, he’s been here advising me,’ Lexa said.

 

‘You mean avoiding his mother,’ Kane said.

 

‘Do you know where I can find him?’ Bellamy asked.

 

Lexa shook her head, jaw clenched.

 

‘We don’t stand a chance against Azgeda playing offense. Mount Weather’s compromised now, and it was a Hail Mary anyway. Get everyone we have left to Polis. They need to be ready for when Jasper finds the door to the second dawn bunker.’ Bellamy made to leave the room.

 

‘Bellamy, where are you going!’ Kane called after him.

 

‘To find Roan,’ Bellamy answered back as he pulled the door firmly shut behind him.

 

He did find Roan, exactly where he did not expect to, but upon reflection, where he should have thought to look first.

 

‘He looks strong. He’s going to be tall,’ Roan commented as he felt Bellamy come to stand beside him. Together they stood, side by side, watching from a distance as August played.

 

He’d been drawing with a stick in the dirt, carving shapes and lines into it, but now tossed the stick aside to copy Mea in watching a small bug crawl across the ground, reaching out pointed finger. He bounced excitedly, and turned to Mea, who in his eyes, at four years old, was basically a grown up, to exclaim something or other.

 

‘Azgeda have taken the mountain,’ Bellamy told Roan evenly.

 

Roan’s shock was evident. Though his overall demeanor remained one of composure, his eyes swam with questions. His stance changed, shoulders dropping, arms falling to his sides. ‘I… I didn’t know that-’

 

`I know,’ Bellamy said gently, despite the extreme pressure of this situation he was directly in the middle of, his jaw clenching. As many reservations as he had about Roan, he knew he only ever did what he thought was best for his people, that he wanted peace, and he’d grown to genuinely care for August.

 

‘Why would they do that?’

 

It was a fair question, given Roan had no knowledge of what was to come, but Bellamy was reluctant to give him an answer. He swallowed roughly, avoiding Roan’s heavy gaze. ‘Because the world is ending,’ he finally managed.

 

Roan nodded stoically.

 

‘You don’t seem that surprised,’ Bellamy said, almost accusatorial in his tone.

 

‘There is a certain number of my people that have always believed the fires would come again. My mother’s most valued seer made a prophecy when I was a child, saying it would start with the stars falling to earth and setting the forests on fire.’

 

There was a pause as Bellamy considered this. ‘Well… that didn’t happen.’

 

‘No, not the stars, but, certainly, something fell to earth,’ Roan stared pointedly back at Bellamy. ‘Ai faya kem, en graun ste sonchada, kem ir gon fayabreia, kom le osir throu sheidgeda,’ he quoted.

 

‘Is that what the seer said?’ Bellamy could work out a fair bit of it, but it also contained quite a few words he’d not yet heard before. He could figure out it was talking about the fires coming again, and that they’d survive it.

 

‘The last few lines of it. I’ll always remember seeing her obsessed, repeating that the ‘heir of the firebringer’ would come, but… whether her words can be counted upon, or who that person is, nobody knows.’

 

‘Firebringer?’ Bellamy muttered to himself. He knew that story.

 

‘It’s an old tale. From before praimfaya.’

 

‘It’s not just an old tale, it’s one of the oldest.’ Bellamy smiled despite himself. Funny, how mythology had survived even the world ending. ‘Prometheus denied the gods and brought fire to mankind… to keep them warm, to help them cook food, and make tools; it was the start of civilisation.’

 

‘Ah, and so it begins and ends in fire,’ a familiar, dry, slightly smug voice shattered the somber moment. ‘Poetic.’

 

Bellamy turned to see Murphy. Expression sharp, but eyes dull, the bags under his eyes a shade or two darker than usual. He was dressed for travel in his jacket and heavy boots, a knife strapped to his leg, and a large duffle slung over his shoulder.

 

‘Going somewhere?’ Bellamy tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Murphy was a survivor, it wasn’t like him to walk in the opposite direction to salvation.

 

‘They’re not going to let Emori in the bunker,’ Murphy said simply, his expression one of angry resignation. ‘She’s not part of the coalition, technically, so…’

 

Bellamy’s eyes grew wide, he took a step or two toward Murphy and grasped his shoulder. “I’ll talk to Lexa, we can-’

 

‘Please, you know she doesn’t give a shit what you think.’ Murphy rolled his eyes at Bellamy, shrugging his hand off. ‘They left Emori out to die once, and they’d do it again just as easily.’

 

‘Where are you going to go?’ Bellamy wasn’t Murphy’s biggest fan, but he didn’t want him dead, and Emori and Otan certainly seemed like they didn’t deserve that. It so easily could have been August, but two almost invisible scars on his feet were all that were left of his deformity. Emori and Otan’s were significantly less easy to conceal.

 

‘The lab,’ Murphy’s jaw was tense, and he regarded Roan in clear suspicion as he spoke, ‘if Clarke works out this nightblood thing we’re going to be there, if not… there’s the rocket. ’

 

‘Raven said we don’t have fuel for it.’

 

‘We do now. Jasper found some fuel hidden on the south side of Polis when he was looking for an entrance for the bunker yesterday. It’s a long shot but if the nightblood thing doesn’t work out then...’ Murphy looked about, as if afraid of being overheard, still very wary of where Roan was standing only a few metres away. ‘Raven can adapt the engine but, I… I need the rover. I can’t transport this stuff on horseback.’

 

Bellamy huffed, smiling a little. Typical Murphy, always wanting something, though he could hardly blame him for it this time. ‘And here I thought you came for a goodbye hug.’

 

‘Bellamy, please.’

 

Murphy’s begging startled him. ‘Yeah… yeah, take it. Just… see you back here in a week with Clarke, okay?’

 

Murphy nodded, eyes glinting with a little of the light they’d been missing recently. ‘See you then.’

 

‘John!’ They looked over to see Emori stood off away from them across the street, her hand raised, waving slightly.

 

Bellamy clapped Murphy on the shoulder. ‘May we meet again,’ he said gruffly.

 

‘Yeah,’ Murphy said shortly, and with that he was striding off.

 

The fact Bellamy wasn’t sure when or even if he’d see Murphy again struck a chord, and that overriding feeling Bellamy had been living with for the past few months that something terrible was about to happen grew stronger and harder to ignore.

 

‘That’s actually what I wanted to speak to you about.’ Bellamy sighed, watching Murphy leave as he moved back to speak to Roan.

 

Roan regarded him quizzically, unsure to what he was referring.

 

‘A contingency plan.’ Bellamy licked his lips, preparing himself to ask a personal question. ‘If you turned up to Mount Weather, do you think they’d let you in?’

 

Roan looked confused by this. ‘Whilst my mother and I are not on good terms, I do not believe she wants me dead.’

 

Bellamy looked out across the dusty street to see where Mea sat on the ground, unsuccessfully attempting to teach a muddled August some kind of clapping game.

 

Bellamy’s voice grew soft, ‘what about if you had Wanheda’s son with you?’

 

Roan looked at him as though he had gone mad, ‘Why are you asking me this?’

 

‘Because I want my son to live.’ Bellamy turned to all but stare Roan down, a desperation in his dark eyes that he couldn’t and didn’t bother to hide.

 

‘And you think my mother would let him live?’

 

‘You could convince her. If Clarke doesn’t find a solution at the lab, and we don’t find the door to this bunker, it might be his only chance.’

 

‘Daddy!’ August interrupted, toddling quickly up to them. He held up his finger for inspection, ‘budderfly, on, on-’ he seemed too excited to finish, and couldn’t find the words.

 

‘Wow, really?’ Bellamy smiled unconvincingly, not that August noticed. Someone, Cullan most likely, had coaxed a butterfly onto August’s finger. It had flown away now, leaving a little dust behind, but August still held his finger aloft as if the memory of the butterfly was the most important thing in the whole world, which of course, to him, it was.

 

‘Woan,’ August held his finger out to Roan.

 

Roan knelt before him, ‘we’ll make an animal tamer of you yet.’ He ruffled August’s curls, then looked up to consider Bellamy, and nodded slowly.

 

Bellamy let out a sigh of relief, eyes fluttering closed. He’d rather not die, but if he did, he would do so knowing at least August had a chance.

 

It began with a few people, weapons drawn, running toward the commander’s tower a few hundred yards to the left, yelling and swinging their swords around. Bellamy instinctively grabbed August as a select number of angry grounders addressed the crowd, crying out about Skaikru and Azgeda betrayal. Roan and Bellamy shared a look.

 

Bellamy kept his head down, holding August tightly to him, and ran across the Gelma. He whispered gruffly, ‘Take August and Mea to my room; don’t let anyone in. Roan,’ He looked back, and jerked his head in the direction of a back door.

 

Roan nodded.

 

‘Where are you going?’ Cullan asked, her own child clutched to her in the same way Bellamy’s held August.

 

Bellamy answered as he transferred a very confused August into Gelma’s arms, ‘I have to talk to the commander.’

 

He ushered the five of them off just in time, for a soon as they disappeared around the wall, Bellamy heard a yell from the gathering mob.

 

‘Hei! Nomonjoka!’

 

Bellamy turned slowly, one hand automatically going to his gun, the other clenched in a tight fist. He squared his shoulders and tightened the line of his mouth in a somewhat subconscious attempt to look more intimidating.

 

A stocky man with a clean-shaven head and dark beard was a hundred yards away pointing his weapon right at him, teeth gritted. ‘I see you, _Skaigyon_.’ He was held above the rest of the crowd, perhaps stood on a box or crate. What looked to be a long knife was brandished in his right hand, and he spun it in a dramatic flourish. The crowd egged him on, cheering his antics.

 

‘You don’t want to fight me,’ Bellamy called back.

 

‘Oh, I think I do,’ he said, earning cries of encouragement from the gathering mob. He jumped from the box and the crowd parted as he strode through it.

 

‘I am not your enemy,’ Bellamy raised his weapon slightly. Though not high enough to actually be threatening, it was ready to fire if necessary, ‘and I have the protection of the commander.’

 

The man tilted his head as he neared Bellamy, as if trying to make sense of his face. ‘Oh... I know who you are. You’re not just any sky rat.’ He laughing grimly, and addressed the crowd that was almost fully encircling them now; expecting a fight, they had automatically formed an arena.

 

‘This,’ the man jabbed his sword in Bellamy’s direction, ‘is Wanheda’s _Harjok.’_ There was a series of mutterings and sniggers amongst the crowd as the man laughed at his own taunt.

 

Bellamy had never heard that word before, but he could certainly take a stab at guessing what it meant, it hardly took a genius to figure out the general meaning. His nostrils flared at the insult to Clarke and himself, but he willed himself to stay calm so he could de-escalate the situation. Clarke’s voice in his head, telling him to rise above it, for everyone’s sake. He didn’t want to start a riot.

 

The man’s smile was crooked and sharp as he continued, ‘What’s she like? Wanheda. Is she as ruthless in-’

 

Without sound or sign the man fell into the dust. He cried out in pain, clutching his shoulder as blood poured out over his fingers. A small knife was now embedded deep into the space between his neck and his shoulder. It was not a wound that could kill, but definitely one that would bleed enough to scare him.

 

Bellamy let out a ragged breath.

 

‘Chil yo daun!’ Octavia addressed the people gathered around them exasperatedly as she emerged, materialising from out of the crowd behind Bellamy.

 

‘I was trying to de-escalate the situation,’ Bellamy said sharply through gritted teeth.

 

‘So was I,’ Octavia said dryly. She approached the man on the ground, drew her sword, and pointed it at him.

 

‘Octavia, nou!’ Lincoln appeared, pushing through the crowd, followed by a number of others. Lexa, a couple of ambassadors, and four of her guards, filtered into the make-shift arena.

 

‘What is this?’ Lexa demanded to know.

 

‘This,’ Octavia gestured with her sword almost nicking the wounded man’s neck, earning a grunt of pain from him as he shuffled back, agitating his wound in order to escape her, ‘insulted my family.’

 

‘Ill-advised,’ Lexa said, ‘but not deserving of a blood payment.’ She motioned for Octavia to lower her weapon.

 

And Octavia did, very reluctantly.

 

Lexa called one of her guards forward, ‘take him to the healers.’

 

The guard did as he was told, dragging the grumbling man up onto his feet and half leading, half carrying him off out of sight.

 

Bellamy walked over to stand by Lexa. ‘What now?’ he murmured so only she could hear.

 

‘Now, I tell them the truth,’ Lexa said very decidedly, walking out to the center of the crowd, motioning for her guards to stay back. She surveyed the faces in the crowd, as if staring each and every person down individually. ‘It’s all true.’

 

Angry yelling and jeering drowned out her speech for a moment, and she was forced to wait for when it grew quieter again. ‘The fires are coming again, and as our ancestors once did, we must take to the ground to survive. Skaikru are not your enemy. They discovered the fires were returning, and have ensured our survival.’

 

‘Azgeda’s!’ A woman yelled from the back, instigating a rumbling from the crowd, cries of anger growing again.

 

‘Azgeda did take the mountain, but that is not the ground from which our ancestors rose. Trust in me!’ There was a demand and a plea in Lexa’s voice. ‘Trust in me.’ She drew her sword, rising it above her head, she cried out, ‘Kom folau, oso na gyon op!’

 

The crowd, seemingly placated for now, cried back to her, out of sync, but unified, ‘Kom folau, oso na gyon op!’

 

Taking his leave before more trouble could catch up with him, Bellamy began to make his way back to his room to check on August, delving deep into his own thoughts as he let his feet carry him.

 

He didn’t immediately react when a figure reached out and dragged him into a closet. As soon as he regained his balance, he attempted a punch, but missed.

 

‘Stop,’ the hooded figure cried out, holding a hand out. ‘I do not wish to harm you.’

 

Bellamy didn’t relax his stance, fists up. ‘Who are you?’

 

‘My name is Gaia.’ The woman lowered her hood to reveal a young face, and eyes so dark and intense they made him want to avert his gaze. She had a leather band around her head that kept a set of tidy dreadlocks away from her face. Her hands were empty, held up to make this obvious to him, and he saw no evidence of a concealed weapon under her cloak.

 

‘What do you want?’

 

‘You’re Bellamy Blake? Kom Skaikru?’ She looked like she knew exactly who he was, but was just making sure.

 

‘Yes,’ Bellamy was still on edge, and this was apparent in his tone of voice, sharp and reluctant as it was.

 

Gaia’s gaze was unrelenting and earnest. ‘My mother told me you’re looking for a door in the ground.’

 

Bellamy finally relaxed a little, drawn in by the possibility of a breakthrough. ‘You... know one?’

 

Gaia nodded, eyes narrowing conspiratorially. ‘You may bring your sister if you wish. Wait by the rear tower as the sun sets and I will find you.’ She exited the closet swiftly, leaving a number of questions in her wake, collected on the tip of Bellamy’s tongue.

 

First he tracked down Jasper, which took about an hour, and so, by the time Bellamy found Octavia too the sun was already setting.

 

‘Hey, I looked everywhere for you,’ he greeted her.

 

She was in the med center. The radiation was getting worse; every day more and more people were getting ill. To start with it was just more people searching for remedies for headaches and stomach upsets, now it was getting worse, complaints of vomiting and nausea skyrocketing, not to mention skin complaints. A few days ago they’d had their first death. A daughter had brought in her aging father, panicking as he threw up his stomach lining. Abby hadn’t been able to save him. As Bellamy looked about now, he saw all the beds full.

 

Octavia looked between Bellamy and Jasper, intrigued as to why they’d come looking for her instead of just waiting to see her at dinner. ‘Abby needed some errands running. She’s been a real pain to deal with since Lexa demanded she stay in Polis. Sorry, why did you need me?’ She settled on Jasper, frowning.

 

‘Don’t look at me, I know nothing,’ Jasper held up his hands in surrender.

 

‘I’ll explain when we get there,’ Bellamy said, with some finality.

 

He tried not to look too much in a hurry as they strode back to the tower, but Octavia always walked like she had somewhere to be, and he and Jasper had to keep up with her, so it was a bit of a useless exercise.

 

They turned a corner, entering an unpopulated section hidden in the shadow of the commander’s tower. Immediately Bellamy saw two figures, one hooded in green whom he immediately recognised as the girl from earlier, and one that also looked entirely familiar.

 

‘Indra?’ Bellamy questioned as they neared the pair.

 

‘You’re late,’ Gaia accused them.

 

‘ ‘At sunset’ isn’t a very specific time,’ Octavia snarked evenly.

 

‘I also remember saying only to bring your sister.’ Gaia ignored Octavia’s comment in favour of glaring at Jasper.

 

‘I trust Jasper, and he deserves to be here,’ Bellamy said, unwavering.

 

Bellamy looked between Gaia and Indra, seeing the obvious similarities. He made a connection. ‘When you said your mother had told you-’

 

Indra interjected, ‘Enough introductions. We should move. We’ll follow Gaia at a distance.’

 

Bellamy swallowed his questions once again, and did as he was instructed.

 

The group held back as Gaia set off, waiting for a few long moments before following her. They walked for what felt like a long while, but might not have been more than ten minutes. They came to an abrupt stop outside an unassuming brick building. As they filed quietly into the battered structure, the sun dipped below the horizon. Bellamy faltered seeing this, wondering about August. Would Gelma or Roan think to tell him a bedtime story? Was he wondering where Bellamy was? Was he crying for him?

 

‘Bell,’ Octavia hissed, pulling him in after her, and shutting the door behind them.

 

Gaia lit a torch from a small cauldron to her right, sending flickering light to play across the walls. ‘This is the temple of the flame. Azgeda once guarded this place, but… they’ve abandoned it for the safety of the mountain.’

 

‘Doesn’t look like much,’ Octavia looked about the interior, seeing nothing particularly interesting.

 

Bellamy, however, was transfixed on something carved into the stone above the square metal archway in front of him. ‘That’s the symbol of the commanders.’

 

Behind him Jasper drew in a sharp breath and shifted. He took a step forward to stand beside Bellamy, pulling something from his jacket pocket, ‘Bellamy.’

 

‘Hm?’ Bellamy looked down to see what Jasper held out to him, studying it. The seal from the first bunker, so intricate he hadn’t had time to study it in much detail.

 

‘You see that?’ Jasper asked.

 

Bellamy squinted. Small as anything, tucked into the detail at the rim of the seal, was a familiar mark. ‘Right.’ Bellamy shared a look with Jasper.

 

‘Follow me,’ Gaia beckoned, holding her torch aloft. She drew the battered old brocade curtain away from the archway under the symbol.

 

‘You said Azgeda guard this place, or ...they did. Why? No one seemed to know there was a door here apart from you?’ Bellamy followed quickly after her, determined to get some answers.

 

‘All the clans must guard the flame in turn,’ Gaia explained cryptically. ‘Commander Lexa entrusted the temple to Azgeda for the winter season as a peace offering. A show of trust.’

 

‘So the flame is here? What does the flame have to do with the commander?’ Bellamy said, exasperated.

 

Gaia gave him a withering look, as though she thought him stupid and ignorant, and she probably did. ‘Everything,’ she responded, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

 

Bellamy fell back, allowing Gaia to lead alone, and found himself beside Indra.

 

‘It’s not here. The commander carries the flame with them,’ she said, eyes ahead, unprompted, ‘and when the commander dies, another is called upon to take it, to become the next commander. The flame is only guarded here when no commander is yet to be chosen.’

 

Bellamy followed this logic through to its conclusion, ‘So, Lexa-’

 

‘Currently holds it. Yes.’

 

‘I still don’t understand why you would guard this place knowing the thing you’re guarding is somewhere else.’

 

‘It’s tradition. The temple must never be without guards,’ Indra said.

 

‘And yet,’ Octavia said. She’d obviously been listening in the whole time.

 

‘Here,’ Gaia announced. They entered into a room adorned floor to ceiling with candles, and yet still somehow completely bleak. Dark fabrics and woods made up every surface and hanging, with a large, ugly, threadbare rug laid down across the stone floor. Gaia crouched to grasp the corner of it and dragged it away, revealing a gleaming, silver hatch tucked away to sleep underneath.

 

There was a pause as they considered what this might mean if they could get it open. They could save so many people. Bellamy had never wanted his son to grow up underground, trapped like Octavia was, but this could be different. He was so loved, and he would have so many people with him who cared for him. He wouldn’t be lonely like Octavia had been, despite how hard Bellamy had tried to make her life feel full and purposeful.

 

‘How do we get in?’ Octavia asked, settling upon the question they were all most afraid of. Or rather, they were afraid of the answer. Bellamy found it cruel; if they couldn’t get in now, this might be the thing to make him snap, to be forced to sit at the door to salvation with no way to unlock it.

 

‘Gaia, did you ever see a seal like this one,’ Jasper held up the object so she could inspect it, ‘but with a twelve on it maybe. It might not have been circular.’

 

Gaia took the seal and turned it over in her hands, ‘No, I remember all my teachings on the flame, and I’ve never seen or heard of a key like this.’ She placed it back into Jasper’s waiting hands.

 

‘Key,’ Jasper repeated to himself. He settled in one of the chairs off to the side, and began to run a thumb over the seal, brow furrowed as he considered every scratch and indent.

 

‘Maybe we can pry it open,’ Bellamy knelt and ran his fingers around it, thinking of what he might be able to jam into the gap to lever it open. Not much, he noted, feeling how little of a gap there was between the hatch and the floor.

 

‘Wouldn’t that damage it?’ Octavia worried aloud.

 

‘Maybe, but we could reseal it from the inside somehow. I’m sure of it,’ Bellamy voiced his thoughts aloud.

 

‘Fire,’ Jasper muttered, ‘I tell you, this Conogan guy had a fixation.’

 

‘Cadogan,’ Bellamy corrected.

 

‘Either way, obsessed with it, probably a complete masochist honestly, definitely had arsonistic tendencies.’ Jasper waved the seal around as he spoke. ‘Definitely the type to let people die because they can’t figure out his stupid riddle.’

 

Octavia raised an eyebrow at this display. ‘Jasper, what are you-’

 

‘From the ashes,’ Jasper said triumphantly, wandering over toward the nearest lit cauldron, ‘it’s an instruction.’ With that, he dropped the only seal they had into the fire.

 

‘Jasper!’ Bellamy yelled.

 

Octavia and he rushed to get it out of the fire, but recoiled as the fire grew bigger and glowed an uncanny pink. Bellamy grabbed a nearby cloth and threw it over the cauldron, smothering the flames. A tense moment or two later he lifted the cloth and checked to see the damage.

 

‘Shit,’ Octavia murmured, blinking twice, she reached into the cauldron. Left behind in the ashes, as promised, was the twelfth seal, glimmering gold in the candle light. The original circular eleventh seal had evaporated, leaving behind one shaped like an arrowhead, with a tail formed of the number twelve in roman numerals.

 

‘Thought you said you trusted me?’ Jasper teased Bellamy.

 

‘Jasper, you’re a genius.’ Bellamy laughed.

 

‘Jasper,’ Octavia held out the seal to him, indicating he should do the honours.

 

‘No,’ he refused. ‘Go on, girl-under-the-floor; first on the ground, now you’ll be the first into it.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the hatch, urging her to get on with it.

 

Octavia looked to Bellamy for confirmation, and he sent her an encouraging nod. ‘Go on.’

 

The twelfth seal slipped easily into the slot in the hatch, and with a twist or two from Octavia, a loud click echoed. She dug her fingers under the edge of the door, and they all rushed forward to help her pull it open. Once the staircase below was revealed, Bellamy could see it was identical in design to the bunker they’d found in the north.

 

‘Hail salvation,’ Octavia muttered under her breath.

 

‘We should tell the commander,’ Gaia said, watching as Octavia made her way down into the bunker.

 

‘Not tonight,’ Bellamy replied. ‘We can tell Lexa and draw up plans tomorrow. I just… want to look around first.’

 

Gaia looked to Indra, who, at least from where Bellamy was standing, gave nothing back. However, Gaia seemed to see something in her mother’s gaze that caused her to turn back to him and give him a curt nod of agreement.

 

Bellamy followed Octavia and Jasper into the bunker, drawing in a breath between his teeth as he saw the clean, concrete lines of it’s walls and balconies and arches, reminded a little of the architecture of the Ark, built in the same decade for the same purpose. It was cleaner than he would have believed, but that was a sign; a sign that this bunker was airtight. No bugs or plant spores had made their way into the bunker to make their home here in the hundred years it had been left empty and undisturbed.

 

Octavia laughed, pulling Jasper into her in an awkward side-hug that trapped one of his arms against his body. He patted her on the back with his free hand in response, smiling.

 

Bellamy ran his hand over the bannister, disappearing off into the depths of the bunker without a word to the others.

 

Soon he found himself on the deepest floor, standing at the end of a long, dark hallway, staring down it. He imagined Clarke and August. He imagined August running down these cold, clinical hallways with his friends, laughing and playing. He wouldn’t know anything but this until he was almost eight years old; he wouldn’t remember all the days Clarke spent sat out on the grass with him letting him carve shapes and lines into his own piece of parchment, as she sketched scenes of Arkadia, or recall Bellamy taking him to the hot pools, spinning him around in the shallows as he laughed himself to tears. For a while at least, the world above would be a stranger to August, the same way the world below had been to his parents. Bellamy felt a tear running down his cheek before he even realised he was crying.

 

He wiped his damp cheeks and dripping nose with his sleeve before marching off to try and figure out how many people this bunker could hold.

 

‘One thousand two hundred,’ he said when he found Jasper and Octavia again. They were on the fourth level, the second dawn bunker’s equivalent of Agro Station. He was holding a soft, leatherbound book aloft. A census, like the one Clarke and he had written up for Arkadia.

 

Octavia and Jasper both looked at him blankly, before realising what he meant. Their faces fell, with Jasper looking especially pained.

 

‘I was hoping for two-thousand spaces at least,’ Octavia said softly.

 

‘How many grounders are there?’

 

‘In Polis right now, there’s about three thousand, and two-hundred of ours. We have a lot of refugees seeking medical attention,’ Bellamy’s voice was like gravel, and his words felt rough in his throat.

 

‘This isn’t right,’ Octavia said simply.

 

‘I need,’ Jasper sucked in a breath, harshly, almost choking on it, ‘I need some air.’ He made his exit swiftly, rushing past Bellamy, he bumped their shoulders together hard in the process, muttering an apology as he barreled out the door.

 

Octavia and Bellamy shared a worried look.

 

‘I’ll go,’ Bellamy offered. ‘Scout the rest of the levels, and bring Indra and Gaia back up. We should close this place back up for now.’

 

Jasper was bent over, hands on his knees, breathing hard, when Bellamy found him. He was outside the bunker, against a wall around the back of the building, and didn’t seem to register Bellamy’s presence immediately, too caught up in his own head.

 

‘Jasper, you’re okay,’ Bellamy attempted to put a soothing hand on his shoulder, but Jasper recoiled, standing bolt upright and taking a few steps back, stumbling a little.

 

‘Leave me… I’m… I’m fine. Just…’ he trailed off, shaking his head. He bent over again, trying to control his own breathing.

 

This time when Bellamy placed a hand on his back, Jasper let him. Bellamy waited for Jasper to calm down, before speaking again.

 

‘I’m so sorry, Jasper,’ Bellamy’s voice was so very gentle, the same one he used when he was telling August a bedtime story.

 

‘I thought I was over it,’ Jasper sounded teary, sniffling. It had been over two years now, and after overcoming a lot of anger and resentment, Jasper had seemed to heal. He still had nightmares, and Bellamy knew he took medication, but they’d never spoken of it.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ Bellamy couldn’t figure out what else to say. Given the part he’d had in Maya’s death, maybe he had no right to try to comfort Jasper.

 

‘You know, it’s felt good, these past few months, being useful again. Almost forgot what it was I was searching for;  what it all meant.’ Jasper finally looked up, his eyes bloodshot and dull.

 

‘This isn’t ideal, but it’s all we’ve got,’ as soon as he said those words, Bellamy realised he’d said something similar a number of times before.

 

Jasper smiled without humour, thin and accepting. ‘How many times are we going to have to say that?’

 

Bellamy stayed silent.

 

‘How many times are we going to have to sacrifice our humanity.’ Jasper had tears streaming down his cheeks, his gaze averted. ‘You know, for a long time I thought we didn’t deserve to live. The cost of it was too high.’

 

‘We bear it, so they don’t have to,’ Bellamy quoted quitely.

 

Jasper looked to him, eyes wide.

 

‘I make these choices, so that my son will never have to. I will do _whatever_ it takes to keep him alive,’ Bellamy said slightly dangerously.

 

Jasper nodded slowly. ‘You’re taking him into the bunker tonight, aren't you? That’s the real reason you told Gaia to wait until tomorrow to tell Lexa.’

 

Bellamy didn’t answer.

 

‘It’s okay, Bellamy.’ Jasper’s tears were drying now, though he still looked just as pained. ‘I get it, I just... I don’t know if I can do this. Go hide in a bunker whilst everyone else is burning.’

 

‘We need you. Nobody else will be able to run the hydrofarm,’ Bellamy pointed out.

 

‘Monty’s better at all that,’ Jasper responded.

 

‘Monty’s not here,’ Bellamy said, reaching out to give Jasper a few pats on the back. ‘See what you can do with it tomorrow.’

 

After Jasper left, Bellamy crouched in wait. As soon as he heard voices inside the building, he steeled himself, jaw clenching.

 

He could hear Indra’s voice clearly, ‘Gaia has no clan. It makes the most sense.’

 

‘Why don’t we just hide it here,’ Bellamy made out Octavia’s too as he moved closer to the entrance.

 

The three women appeared from the building, carefully closing the door behind them.

 

‘Unguarded?’ Gaia challenged, ‘My faith commands me to protect the commander, Octavia, and she would never enter the bunker without her people. If you refuse to trust me, trust in that.’

 

Bellamy heard Octavia’s reluctant grunt of agreement.

 

The women parted ways, with Gaia heading off in a slightly different direction to the other two. Bellamy waited a few long moments before following her, trying to control his breathing and soften his step, worried they would give him away. He followed her for near on ten minutes, before realising how close they were getting to the commander’s tower. Gaia had lied too;  she was going to tell Lexa. It had to be now.

 

Tense and aching with guilt, Bellamy was shaking a little as he raised and cocked his gun.

 

Gaia heard the clink behind her and stilled. ‘I thought you might be a traitor. I hoped you’d prove me wrong.’

 

‘I’m not a traitor, not unless you believed me to serve the commander,’ Bellamy said evenly, trying to appear unaffected, even though he was very much not so, ‘which I never have.’ He walked closer to Gaia, and came to stand in front of her in the narrow street, face to face, both of them lit only by moonlight.

 

‘I will never give you the key,’ Gaia told him.

 

‘I know,’ Bellamy said solemnly. Lifting his gun high, he brought the butt of it down hard against Gaia’s skull, sending her crumpling to the ground. He dragged her behind a nearby structure, out of sight of the street, and took a moment to check to make sure he was really passed out. Guilt clouded his vision as he cut the key from the string around her neck, but he blinked it away. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he whispered.

 

He found Gelma and Cullan asleep with Mea between them in his bed when he returned to his room. Roan was propped up at the end of it, snoring away, a hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

 

Swallowing roughly, Bellamy ignored them and scooped August out of his cot, careful not to wake him, wrapping him up tightly in blankets. As he made to leave, something stopped him. Looking back, he chewed his lip to the point of breaking the skin, seeing where Mea was breathing softly, curled up against her grandmother, her little hand caught in her mother’s grasp.

 

Bellamy threw his gaze to the ceiling, berating himself internally for what he was about to do.

 

He couldn’t leave them. Gelma had saved Clarke and August once; this was his chance to repay that debt. And Roan, Roan was Azgeda… Bellamy knew he would probably die if he didn’t get into the bunker right now. He didn’t want Roan dead. It had become apparent recently how much Roan had down to put off the war, incurring the wrath of his mother a number of times in the process. He had been true to his oath regarding August, never faltering or failing in it. Despite their past, Bellamy couldn’t just leave him here.

 

Bellamy woke them all gently, ignoring their confused stares and the questions in their eyes, shushing their attempts to speak.

 

‘Follow me, and don’t make a sound,’ he whispered.

 

The real trial was getting out of the tower, once they had done that, they could make the journey relatively easily. Bellamy knew the place well enough now to be sure of where the guards would be, and so they avoided them fairly easily, with one close call in which a pair crossed a corridor they were making their way down. Bellamy pushed everyone flat to the wall with one outstretched arm and held his breath until he couldn’t hear their footfall anymore.

 

Bellamy kept his eyes straight ahead as they walked, encouraging a quick pace. When he was opening the door to the temple, he suddenly registered Gelma’s face.

 

She looked horrified. ‘I can’t. This is the temple of the flame.’

 

‘Please,’ Bellamy said desperately, adjusting August against him. ‘For your daughter and granddaughter’s sake, trust me. Please!’

 

Gelma nodded, brow deeply furrowed.

 

‘No guards?’ Roan asked gruffly.

 

‘Not anymore.’ Bellamy walked them through to the back of the temple, pulling the rug from the floor.

 

He felt a further silence settle over the room as he used the key to open the hatch, and, with Roan’s help, pulled it open with one, straining arm, completely reluctant to put August down even for a minute.

 

‘What is this?’ Gelma asked.

 

‘A chance to live,’ Bellamy surmised.

 

The sound of people outside, angry shouts from a few streets away, brought Bellamy back to reality. They needed to hurry. It seemed maybe Gaia hadn’t stayed hidden as long as Bellamy had hoped she would.

 

Cullan shared a wide-eyed look with her mother and then moved quickly down the stairs. With a grateful nod to Bellamy, Roan followed her.

 

Bellamy placed a hand on Gelma’s arm to coax her into the hole in the ground. He then shut the hatch behind them.

 

He led them through to collect what they would need. Even though he’d brought blankets and food, it was only enough for two people, thinking to tuck Octavia and August away safely where no one would find them until it was too late. Now he saw that had been a long-shot, and Octavia probably wouldn’t have agreed to it. With the new circumstances, they now needed enough food to keep three adults and two children going for… weeks? No one knew how long until the end of the world. All they had was predictions.

 

They were raiding the supplies when a loud thump reverberated through the bunker, like thunder in the walls; the hatch had been thrown open with some great amount of force. There was a muffled clatter of weaponry and some distant, indistinct shouting.

 

Bellamy tensed; he’d been in such a rush that he’d left the key in the hatch.

 

The hiding place Bellamy had chosen was on the other side of the bunker but he tried not to focus on the steadily more impossible nature of getting to it, and stuffed what they had into a duffle bag he’d brought with him.

 

‘Quickly, and don’t make a sound,’ Bellamy warned, beckoning for them all to follow him.

 

Two warriors guarded the stairway as their friends searched the halls for intruders, looking down into the floor below from the balcony.

 

Bellamy pursed his lips to stop himself growling in frustration. He rubbed a hand over August’s back as the boy slept peacefully, unaware of it all, drooling against his shoulder.

 

‘What now, Skaigoufa?’ Gelma asked softly.

 

‘I… I don’t…’ Bellamy stumbled over his words, tears pricking his eyes. He hadn’t planned for this. If they were caught… Bellamy couldn’t even think of what that might mean.

 

‘Let me. I can take them,’ Roan gripped his sword.

 

Bellamy put his hand over Roan’s to stop him drawing his weapon.

 

‘No boy, this is my time, not yours,’ Gelma looked at Roan sternly, eyes flickering with fire. ‘Be ready.’ Drawing her sword, the fire in her eyes growing, she ran back up the corridor they had just come down before Bellamy could stop her.

 

‘Nomon!’ Cullan cried out after her.

 

Bellamy reached out to cover her mouth, muffling the end of the word. He froze, waiting for the sound of heavy footfall coming toward them. He made out the two guards arguing in grounder. Then, only a moment later, Bellamy heard the sickly, soft sound of metal slicing flesh, followed by a few cries, and then the clashing of swords.

 

Cullan looked to him, huge green eyes full of fear and knowing.

 

Bellamy looked around the corner just as Gelma put her sword through the second guard’s stomach, sending him to the floor, gurgling bubbles of blood.

 

Knowing there was no time to waste, Bellamy grasped Cullan’s hand and dragged her across to the other side. He tried to pull her further but met resistance. Roan had run ahead slightly, but now looked back to see the hold up.

 

‘Not without her,’ Cullan pleaded.

 

‘Natrona!’ Came a gruff cry from behind them. The sound of clashing blades and grunts of effort rang out, bouncing off the walls.

 

Pulling herself free, Cullan ran back, only just caught by Roan as she was about to run back into the line of sight. Roan covered Cullan’s mouth to stop her crying out at the sight.

 

They saw Gelma crumpled on the floor, wounded, her bloodied sword at her feet, with a Trigedakru warrior knelt before her, grasping her by the neck.

 

‘Chon's kom yu?’ The warrior demanded to know, shaking her. _‘Who’s with you?’_

 

‘Ai'm lon,’ Gelma lied breathlessly. _‘I’m alone.’_

 

Bellamy took Cullan by the arm, stomach sinking, and dragged her away, a little more gently this time.

 

He settled them into the closet off the room with the hydrothermal generator. It had obviously been used as a sort of make-shift break room for when the bunker had been populated, and still contained a couch, a working faucet, and some shelving. Bellamy placed August gently and wordlessly in Roan’s waiting arms, still fast asleep somehow, and turned to where Cullan was now slumped against the wall, clutching her daughter to her chest.

 

Bellamy knelt in front of her, holding the tops of her arms.

 

‘They’ll execute her for this,’ Cullan’s voice quaked as she spoke.

 

‘I won’t let them,’ Bellamy said. He dropped the bag or supplies from his back onto the floor and looked back to Roan. ‘The door has a bolt lock on it, when I leave, lock it behind me.’

 

Cullan shuddered, then pressed her face into Mea’s hair.

 

Bellamy left her to go over to August. Wrapped up in the blankets, with just his round, flushed face peeking out, he looked younger than he was, more like a baby of just a few months, rather than twenty. Bellamy pressed a kiss to his forehead.

 

‘See you soon.’

 

‘I will protect him with my life,’ Roan promised.

 

Bellamy kept his eyes trained on August for as long as he could, drinking in the sight of him like it was the last time. ‘I know.’

 

It took everything Bellamy had to leave August in that closet, but he owed Gelma a debt, and he wasn’t going to let her die over something he’d gotten her into.

 

There was no one guarding the hatch, and it had been left open. Bellamy slipped out easily, though he was forced to climb up onto the roof of the building and drop down off the back, so as to avoid the new guards posted at the temple’s door. Keeping his head down, he thought it best that he return to his room, and stay there until sunrise. It would look beyond suspicious if he went straight to Lexa to beg for Gelma’s life.

 

He didn’t sleep. Lying awake staring at the ceiling, Bellamy didn’t think so much as just… worry, tormenting himself. It wasn’t quite sunrise when he rose and washed, pulling a clean shirt on.

 

‘Bellamy, open up!’ Octavia paired a rapid series of thumps on the door with the loud call of his name.

 

He considered pretending he wasn’t in, but after a moment, opened the door, trying to look unaware of any excitement.

 

Octavia barely looked at him as she pushed past.

 

‘Octavia!’ he protested. He’d expected her to drag him off somewhere, not come inside.

 

She huffed, crossing her arms tightly across her chest, ‘Gelma’s been arrested.’

 

Bellamy gapped, unable to contain his discomfort, he looked from August’s empty cot to Octavia. He really needed her to leave right now, but had no idea how to usher her back out the room without her noticing August wasn’t here.

 

Octavia continued, ‘I thought we should talk in …’ she followed his gaze and, as he’d anticipated, and faltered as she noticed the empty cot. ‘Bellamy…’

 

Bellamy muttered a curse, averting his eyes. He couldn’t lie to her.

 

‘Where’s August?’ Octavia said, in a low tone.

 

Though he only dared look for a second, the expression of betrayal on her face was one of the most terrible sights he’d ever seen.

 

Bellamy found himself unable to find the right thing to say. He was lost.

 

‘It was you. Of course…’ Octavia sighed raggedly, turning away from him.

 

‘I had to,’ Bellamy’s voice cracked. ‘He’s my son.’

 

Octavia just kept shaking her head in disbelief, sitting heavily down on the end of the bed. ‘He would have had a place in the bunker anyway, Bellamy.’

 

‘You can’t know that,’ Bellamy said bitterly.

 

‘I can,’ a fire burned in Octavia’s eyes as she spoke, standing quickly, she advanced on him, shoulders squared. ‘Lexa made her decision early this morning. Twelve hundred places for eleven clans means one-hundred places each, with one hundred places left for the commander’s personal company, priority first to skilled workers… and then to families with young children. Abby’s been writing a list for Skaikru; Clarke, you, and August are already on it. Gelma’s going to die for nothing.’

 

‘What about Yujledakru? Are Cullan and Mea on their list?’ Bellamy tried to push down the huge amount of self-loathing he was currently feeling, but only ended up directing it at his undeserving sister, almost spitting at her as he spoke.

 

Octavia ignored him, and headed toward the door.

 

Bellamy called out to her as she opened it and stepped out, ‘You would have done the same!’

 

Octavia looked back, her disappointment in him still written on her face.

 

‘If he was yours, you would have done the same.’

 

Octavia shook her head. At what exactly, Bellamy couldn’t be sure. ‘I love you big brother, and for that reason I’ll make sure I’m there when Gaia wakes up.’

 

‘What are they going to do to Gelma?’ Bellamy’s voice cracked.

 

A silence festered between them, and Octavia regarded him somewhat blankly, her mouth in a thin, unforgiving line. ‘She killed two men. Blood must have blood. Lexa’s called for her to be brought before her.’

 

Bellamy ran all the way there, pushing his way into Lexa’s throne room without giving it a second thought. The noise he made as he burst through the doors had everyone turning to stare at him… and the room was packed to overflow.

 

‘Please, don’t do this.’ As he moved forward, Bellamy saw Gelma knelt before Lexa with her arms tied behind her back.

 

Lexa’s expression was one of thunder and wrath. ‘You would speak for this traitor?’

 

‘She didn’t do anything, she-’

 

‘Gelma kom Yujledakru killed two of my best warriors,’ Lexa said through gritted teeth.

 

Bellamy watched in horror as Lexa rose from her seat, and pulled a knife from the sheath at her thigh. Brandishing it she swiped downward, leaving a deep gash across Gelma’s neck and clavicle.

 

‘No, please!’ Bellamy pushed through the throng to come to stand in front of Gelma.

 

‘This is how it must be, Skaigoufa. I killed those men, not you,’ Gelma hissed at him.

 

Bellamy couldn’t do this. It was his fault. ‘It was me, okay. I-’

 

‘Told me where to find the bunker,’ Gelma interjected gruffly and loudly, staring Bellamy down, blood splattered across her face making her look crazed in her intensity. ‘He told me where it had been found. I alone attacked the flamekeeper and went to hide myself. I alone killed those men in my attempt to escape their capture,’ Gelma told Lexa, ‘and I alone will take my punishment with my dignity intact.’

 

Lexa looked between Gelma and Bellamy, appearing to be deciding something. ‘Escort Bellamy back to his room,’ Lexa sighed, ‘before he gets himself killed.’

 

Kane came out of nowhere and gripped Bellamy by the arm. ‘Come on,’ he said under his breath. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’

 

‘No,’ Bellamy growled, and went for his gun, but another hand came out of nowhere and gripped his arm before he could pull it from it’s holster.

 

Behind Lexa, her guards partially drew their swords as a warning to Bellamy to go no further; he wouldn’t survive it.

 

Miller was the one who was there to hold Bellamy back, a solemn look on his face. ‘You can’t save her, Bellamy.’

 

‘This is my fault.’ Bellamy’s knees nearly buckled, but he was held up by Kane and Miller.

 

Neither of them said anything as they pulled him away, unable to find any words to comfort him with.

 

* * *

 

Gelma’s body was sent to the medical center. Lexa seemed to have enough respect for Gelma, as a revered member of Yujledakru, to not string her up to further serve as an example. Then all Bellamy had to do was convince Abby to let him take it, which she took no issue with.

 

Bellamy stood alone by the body, Miller keeping guard on the other side of the curtain, and removed the sheet from over Gelma’s face. Her dark eyes empty and unfocused now, still wide open. Bellamy squeezed his own eyes tightly shut, and reached out to carefully close hers with his thumb and forefinger.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

 

Taking Gelma’s hands, he folded them across her chest so they wouldn’t get in the way when he tied her up in the sheet. As he was rearranging her bloody clothes, he saw something familiar tucked under the collar of her shirt. It was a necklace made of string and wooden beads, like Clarke’s, but instead of having the moon and a star, it had a flower with two leaves; a leaf each for her daughter and granddaughter.

 

Bellamy let out a shaky breath, and reached around her neck to untie it. He put a new knot in it to keep the bead from falling off, and tucked it into his pants pocket.

 

It was all put together, quietly, and in secret, yet somehow, many people knew. When Bellamy arrived with the body, there were at least thirty people present, standing back from the unlit pyre, their faces in shadows, but on some Bellamy could make out the dark designs, broadleaf clan tattoos, winding over and around their arms, crawling up their necks.

 

Bellamy felt awful that they were doing this without Cullan, without her even knowing her mother was dead, but he couldn’t risk endangering her, not after the sacrifice Gelma had made to ensure her place in the bunker.

 

‘Mebi oso na hit choda op nodotaim,’ Bellamy said as he stuck a torch into the pyre and watched the flames make their home there. _‘May we meet again.’_

 

Octavia took his hand and gave it a squeeze as he stepped back. She spoke softly, ‘I’m sorry if I was harsh, I…’

 

‘No, you were right.’ Bellamy swallowed his pride, and squeezed her hand back.

 

‘Jasper said he has something to show you,’ she whispered, her eyes focused on his profile as he watched the flames grow, enveloping Gelma now.

 

Only at this point did he tear his gaze from the flames to look back at her. ‘Please tell me it's good news.’

 

Octavia smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘I have no idea what it’s about, but Jasper looked happy enough, so… I actually think it might be.’

 

Jasper didn’t greet Bellamy when he entered his room, only beckoned him over to his bed, which looked thoroughly unslept in.

 

‘Cadogan had his own entrance, all to himself!’ Jasper threw down a blueprint in front of Bellamy, spreading it out across his bed. ‘Look, door to nowhere?’

 

Bellamy squinted, seeing what Jasper was talking about. There was a door on the lowest level that didn’t seem to have a room on the other side of it. ‘ How do you know?’

 

Jasper grasped a whole bunch of blueprints from behind him and dumped them down on top of the first. ‘This is the only version that has a door on it, and it’s from Cadogan’s study. I checked it out, I think it leads north, to the basement of another building he owned. I mean, makes sense, right? Build a door only you know about and no one’s going to be able to complicate things for you when you go to get in?’

 

‘Well… I wish I’d known about this two days ago.’ Bellamy clenched his jaw.

 

‘You know, Abby didn’t put Harper or Murphy on the list,’ Jasper looked forlornly at Bellamy.

 

‘I know,’ Bellamy sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. ‘Not that Murphy would leave Emori out to die anyway.’

 

‘Monty wouldn’t leave Harper either,’ Jasper said. He hadn’t spoken to Monty yet, but they all knew it. ‘But... now he doesn’t have to.’

 

Bellamy looked up slowly, realising exactly what Jasper was implying.

 

* * *

 

When Bellamy got back to his room he thought about sleep. After all, he’d been awake for over twenty-four hours now, but there was one thing he wanted even more than to sleep. Reaching out for the radio beside his bed, he pressed the button on the side and held it up to his mouth.

 

‘Clarke? You there?’ He waited. He waited for a long while, eventually coming to the conclusion she was asleep. He was going to put it back down when it crackled to life.

 

 _‘Bellamy?’_ She sounded tired, but relieved to hear from him.

 

‘Hey.’ Bellamy brought it back to his mouth, sighing heavily. ‘Hey, it’s good to hear your voice.’

 

_‘It’s late, are you okay?’_

 

She sounded concerned, her voice so soft and tender tears pricked his eyes. ‘August’s safe. The bunker… we got it open.’ He paused.

 

 _‘That’s amazing,’_ Clarke’s tone was one of joy and disbelief, he hated to ruin that.

 

‘But, um, there’s a list,’ Bellamy leant his forehead against the top of the radio, eyes screwed shut, ‘there’s only a hundred spaces for each clan and… Harper and Murphy didn’t make ours, but Jasper and I… we have a plan.’

 

There was a long pause.

 

 _‘What’s the plan?’_ Clarke asked.

 

‘We’ve got a way to sneak Harper, Murphy, Emori, and Otan into the bunker.’ Bellamy waited for the inevitable question, knowing exactly what Clarke would ask, because it was the same question he’d asked Jasper not an hour ago.

 

_‘What about when they realise they have several more people than they should?’_

 

‘We’ll figure that out later, Clarke. We have to try this, and you have to head here now. I… I need you here.’

 

The radio crackled and he heard Clarke sniff, like she was ill... or crying. _‘You know they’ll kill Emori and Otan if they find them?’_

 

‘We can protect them once they’re here,’ Bellamy said through gritted teeth. ‘This is their best chance too.’ He wasn’t sure if that was true, or if he was just trying to convince Clarke… and himself.

 

There was another lengthy pause. _‘Okay.’_

 

Bellamy let out a sigh of relief.

 

_‘Okay, I’ll speak to the others tomorrow and let you know our ETA… I’ll see you soon.’_

 

‘See you soon,’ Bellamy repeated back to her.

 

_‘Night, Bellamy. Give August a kiss for me.’_

 

Bellamy felt her words like a gilded knife, so beautiful, but they cut him. August wasn’t with him, and Gelma was dead. He hadn’t told her yet. He’d convinced himself tonight wasn’t the right time, and that he should tell her in person, but maybe that was more for his benefit.

 

‘Goodnight, Clarke,’ Bellamy said quietly, though he was sure she was already gone.

 

* * *

 

The commander’s chosen hundred guarded the temple day in, day out, and they patrolled the interior so frequently there was no chance of Bellamy sneaking through to see August. It was safer for everyone if he didn’t try.

 

Jasper had special dispensation to enter the bunker in order to work on the hydrofarm, and so he ferried notes back and forth for Bellamy. August was doing well, though both he and Mea were very bored. No guards had bothered to look beyond the hydrothermal generator, and the noise from it stopped them from hearing when the children cried.

 

It did truly feel like the world was ending; the riots were getting more frequent, and every day more radiation victims filed into Polis, accompanied by those who’d been found worthy of being on one of the clans list, and had come to ensure their survival. A certain number of the chosen had refused the summons, unwilling to leave their families and partners behind, but it wasn’t many.

 

It was getting hard to keep track of the number of people who might actually make it into the bunker. In the past few days, twelve more people had died from radiation that they knew of, three of which had been chosen for survival. There was no way of doing this that wasn’t messy, which made Bellamy feel significantly better about the prospect of sneaking his friends in through a back door.

 

A few hours after the spike in radiation deaths was announced, Lexa ordered for the chosen survivors to report immediately to the commander’s tower in order receive tattoos that would ensure their quick entry into the bunker when the time came.

 

By the end of the day, Bellamy was tracing the second dawn symbol on the inside of his wrist, not quite sure how he felt about it. He was sat in silence with Octavia and Jasper in his room, staring at August’s empty cot, the radio in his hands, waiting eagerly for Clarke’s message.

 

They heard it before they saw it. At first they thought it was another riot, another angry mob, but the cries weren’t of anger, they were of pain.

 

Bellamy, still gripping the radio tightly, ran to the window to look down into the square below. Bracing himself against the windowsill, he felt his knees buckle. There was blood everywhere. At first he couldn’t make sense of it. The grounders were… fighting amongst themselves. But then he saw it, a warrior pushing a woman to the ground, grabbing her arm, he checked the inside of her wrist. When he didn’t find what he was searching for, he raised his bloody axe above his head, and swung it down. Bellamy looked away just in time, breathing heavily.

 

‘Bellamy,’ Octavia was crouched at the window at his side. She reached out and grabbed his arm. ‘Bellamy, did you know?’

 

‘No… Lexa,’ he faltered and failed to finish his thought. This was the real reason she’d had the survivors tattooed.

 

Octavia and he just stared, horrified, at each other, both of them desperate to cover their ears to block out the screams of the slaughtered, but aware that doing so felt disrespectful somehow.

 

Jasper wasn’t by the window, he sat curled up against the bedpost a few metres away, his head between his knees, hands threaded roughly through his hair, tugging at it in distress.

 

Octavia got up from her place beside Bellamy, and came to land on her knees beside Jasper, pulling him into her, she held his head to her shoulder and put her other arms tightly around him.

 

They stayed that way for hours.

 

Eventually Bellamy rose shakily to his feet. ‘How do we come back from this?’ He whispered to no one.

 

Octavia lifted her face from where it had been pressed into Jasper’s hair. She understood who he meant by ‘we’. Understood that he feared for the soul of humanity as a whole. ‘I’m not sure we can this time.’

 

Bellamy walked out the tower, with eyes unwavering, not looking once at the guards that milled around, still drenched in the blood of the innocent. The streets were dark with pools of blood, strewn with bodies. And there she was, knelt by the body of a child, no more than ten years old, whispering words of mourning.

 

‘Don’t touch him,’ Bellamy growled, before he could stop himself, so overcome by the sick nature of the scene before him.

 

‘This was necessary,’ Lexa said as she stood, turning to face him. The fact she could even look him in the eyes right now baffled him, just as much as the fact she dared to look upset angered him.

 

‘Why?’ Bellamy yelled. ‘You couldn’t let them die in their family’s arms. Couldn’t give them a chance to say goodbye?’

 

Lexa strode up to him, her eyes aflame. ‘You mean give them a chance to die choking on their own blood, bent over in incredible pain, or burnt alive in the fires? Give them a chance to see their loved ones suffer? Their fight was already over, they’d just failed to accept it.’

 

‘You mean you couldn’t risk more rioting.’ Bellamy shook his head, his sizzling anger and resentment the only thing keeping him from crying as he refused to do so in front of Lexa.

 

‘Rioting that endangers all our survivals. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you care about them more than I do, Bellamy. They are my people, and I think _only_ of them,’ Lexa seethed.  

 

Bellamy swallowed roughly.

 

‘Tomorrow we will burn the bodies, and then we descend. Until then, stay out of my way.’ Lexa shoved past him unnecessarily as she stormed back to the tower.

 

* * *

 

No one celebrated the descent, not that Bellamy saw anyway. Everyone had lost someone or something on their way here.

 

Now the bunker was full of people it was easy enough for Bellamy to go and retrieve August. As soon as he closed the door to the closet behind him, Bellamy fell to his knees.

 

‘Daddy!’ August gasped, and flew at him, wrapping his chubby arms around Bellamy’s neck.

 

Bellamy pressed a kiss anywhere he could reach and held August back so tightly he was almost afraid he might break him.

 

‘Bellamy?’ Cullan stood abruptly. She’d been sat on the couch watching Mea and August play together on the floor.

 

Roan looked up from his spot in the corner, but didn’t get up.

 

Bellamy stood, still clutching August to him. Wordlessly, he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out Gelma’s necklace. He’d tried to wash it, and so the beads were clean, but blood had seeped into the string and stained it. There was no question what had happened. Eyes brimming, he held it out to Cullan. ‘I’m so sorry, I-’

 

A sob from Cullan interrupted him.

 

Mea watched in horror as her mother crumpled to the floor.

 

Suddenly Roan was there, enveloping Cullan in his arms. He looked up to Bellamy, and held out a hand for him to deposit the necklace in. ‘Thank you, Bellamy.’

 

Bellamy clenched his jaw, and left.

 

August called out for Mea as Bellamy shut the door behind himself, and Bellamy’s heart broke. ‘It’s okay. Hey, you’ll see her soon.’

 

Bellamy settled August into the lower bunk under his own. The cots were only for smaller children, and even then they had a serious shortage of them, many families had brought baskets for babies to sleep in. August was too big for that now. A few more months and he’d be two.

 

Smoothing the blankets over August down, Bellamy leant over and pressed a kiss to August’s forehead. He pulled out the trunk from under August’s bed, and undoing the latch, lifted the lid to place August’s storybook inside, safe amongst his clothes and toys; amongst the shoes Harper had made, and the little rover Raven had crafted.  

 

Bellamy looked to the radio, wondering what the hell was taking them so long. If Clarke didn’t contact him by tomorrow morning… Bellamy huffed. He tried not to think the worst. They were probably just too busy packing up all the medical supplies or something like that to call him. Clarke would let him know as soon as they left the lab.

 

* * *

 

Bellamy was watching Octavia attempt to get August to eat by himself. He sucked at it, with more food ending up on his shirt than in his mouth. When he was finished, Octavia wiped his mouth, and reached down into the bag Bellamy had brought, whipping out a fresh shirt for him.

 

‘Hey, you’re a natural,’ Bellamy joked. He held his head up with one hand, the other grasping the radio tightly. He’d hardly slept. Plagued by his anxieties about Clarke and the others. They still hadn’t radioed.

 

‘Don’t get any ideas, Bell. Just because I’m gonna be around now, doesn’t mean I’m fair game.’ Octavia maneuvered August’s shirt off, and tugged the new one over his head.

 

August blew a raspberry at his, screwing his face up.

 

Octavia rearranged his curls when she was finished. ‘I don’t do babysitting.’

 

‘Please, you love it,’ Bellamy scoffed.

 

‘No. I love August, but babies… not my thing.’ Octavia clasped August under the arms, and re-adjusted him on her lap as he stuck a fist in his mouth. ‘You and Clarke can just keep having cute kids and I’ll be there to steal them away when you need me,’ Octavia ruffled August’s hair, earning a bright grin from him in return.

 

Octavia’s cheerful attitude today seemed like a defense mechanism… like they were both trying to forget what they’d seen yesterday, and the worries they had about what came next; everything that could still go wrong.

 

Bellamy traced a thumb over the rivets and scratches on the radio, as if his touch could will it to speak.

 

‘Bell. Just radio them.’

 

Bellamy nodded. He couldn’t wait anymore. Drawing in an uncertain breath, he pressed the button on the side, and spoke, ‘Hey, come in. Anyone there?’

 

Octavia watched pensive, sharing a look with Bellamy as they both waited for a response. None came.

 

‘Clarke, come in,’ he tried again.

 

They waited again.

 

Finally the radio crackled, and a familiar voice was heard, but it wasn’t Clarke. _‘Bellamy,’_ Monty’s tone was one of disbelief and pain.

 

‘Monty, hey. Hey, are you okay?’ Bellamy was so glad to hear his friend’s voice, he almost laughed. ‘Where’s Clarke.’

 

 _‘Um, Clarke’s in surgery. She, um,’_ Monty faltered on the other end, his voice shaky, _‘I’m sorry, something’s happened, Raven, she’s hurt… Otan blew up the rovers. He didn’t know Raven was going to be there.’_

 

‘What?’ Bellamy managed breathlessly, ‘Wh-why?’

 

 _‘It’s… he didn’t want to come back to Polis. I don’t have long. The data I have... priamfaya’s… it’s tomorrow. Either way the radiation levels are- I’m trying to get the rocket ready, I just...’_ Monty let out a ragged breath.

 

Bellamy was frozen, the sounds of the bunker fading away around him, he heard the words Monty had just spoken echoed back to him in his mind, bouncing off the corners of it, taunting him. They were going up in the rocket? They couldn’t walk back to Polis, not with only a day to go, and certainly not with Raven injured.

 

 _‘Bellamy,’_ Clarke’s voice jolted him out of his revere. Her tone was heavy, like she was holding back, trying to hide the fact she was crying.

 

‘Mommy,’ August said reverently, mouth agape. He recognised her voice, and sat upright. He leant forward across the table, his expression one of wonder.

 

‘I’m here, Clarke,’ Bellamy said.

 

She sniffed. _‘I just wanted to say I… I love you,’_

 

Bellamy was too stunned to respond.

 

 _‘I love you, and I love August, can you tell him that? Tell him every day.’_ There was an increase of background noise on the other end. A series of yells, and a scream of _‘Clarke!’_ from someone Bellamy thought was Murphy. _‘I have to go, Bellamy. Keep him safe.’_

 

Bellamy stood, shaking, he pressed roughly down on the button, ‘Clarke?’ No. No, that… that couldn’t be it. There was no way they would be able to use the rocket without Raven piloting, and if the nightblood wasn’t working by now...

 

‘Bellamy,’ Octavia said, holding out a hand in a calming gesture, despite the panic on her own face.

 

‘Clarke!’ Bellamy yelled into the radio.

 

Now the entire cafeteria was staring at him.

 

‘Clarke!’ He tried again, this time his voice breaking, the end of the name caught up in a sob that rose involuntarily from his throat.

 

‘What’s going on?’ Kane appeared, closely accompanied by Abby.

 

Bellamy lowered the radio.

 

‘Clarke and the others they’re not… they...’ Octavia didn’t finish her sentence, but she didn’t need to. The look in her eyes said it all.

 

Abby’s eyes widened in horror.

 

Bellamy didn’t waste time trying to explain, and just stormed away from them, not explaining where he was going or what he was going to do. There were no guards by the entrance, no need for them now the hatch was shut. He grabbed one of the hazmat suits off the wall and began to pull it on, breathing heavily. He attached the radio and his gun to the belt of it, and went to pull his helmet over his head.

 

‘Bellamy, you can’t!’ Octavia entered, followed closely by Kane and Abby.

 

‘Octavia, I have-’

 

‘Bell, please, you can’t do this,’ she repeated herself, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks.

 

‘We can’t lose Clarke!’ Bellamy cried, shaking with the effort. He gripped the ladder tightly, using it to keep himself upright.

 

Abby and Kane watched, both of them appearing petrified. Unable to do more than watch his breakdown unfold.

 

‘I can’t lose her,’ Bellamy clarified softly. He saw August where he was perched on Octavia’s hip, sniffling, tears trailing undisturbed down his face, nose snotty, eyes brimming.

 

‘What about August?’ Octavia’s eyes were so large and green as they pleaded with him, she looked so much like the girl who’d begged him to take her to that dance.

 

‘I’m doing this for him,’ Bellamy explained gruffly.

 

‘I’ll come with you.’ Abby went for a hazmat suit.

 

‘No, you need to stay here and get ready for when we come back with Raven. She’s going to need you.’

 

‘Raven,’ Abby muttered to herself, looking torn. So badly wanting to go after Clarke, but realising this wasn’t where her strengths lay.

 

‘Then I’ll come,’ Octavia went to hand August to Abby.

 

‘No. Daddy!’ August demanded, reaching out for Bellamy, squirming.

 

‘O.’ Bellamy put a hand on Octavia's arm to stop her from passing August over. ‘There’s no point risking more lives than we have to. I need you to look after August.’

 

Octavia gulped, blinking the tears from her eyes, her warpaint now a streaky mess, pale grey lines trailing their way down her cheeks and neck.

 

Bellamy drew her in with one arm and pressed a rough kiss to the crown of her head, ‘ I love you, O.’

 

With a trembling hand, he tenderly brushed the tears from August’s cheeks with his thumb, and so August calmed for a short moment, grasping what he could of Bellamy’s hand and digging his small nails in, silently begging him not to leave. His brown eyes were wide and desperate, shining with tears.

 

‘This isn’t goodbye,’ Bellamy promised, pressing his forehead to August’s and running a hand over the unruly curls at the back of August’s head.

 

Bellamy grabbed the rest of the hazmat suits off the hook and slung them over his shoulder. He didn’t dare look back as he climbed up the ladder, no matter how much August screamed for him. If he had, he wasn’t sure he would have ever made it out.

 

When the hatch door slammed shut, cutting off August’s screams, it felt like a door shutting hard on Bellamy’s soul. Suddenly, he was stood out in the silence of an abandoned world, completely and totally alone.

 

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I drew August! Please take a peek: [LINK](https://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/185709438411/%EF%BE%9F-%EF%BE%9F-%EF%BE%9F-%EF%BE%9F-i-drew-the-bellarke-baby-aka)

ALSO

If you have a tumblr and like this story please click the link and reblog my ToA edit post from my blog!: [LINK](http://daisyqiaolianmay.tumblr.com/post/177531940956/ship-bellamy-blakeclarke-griffin-words-24000) 

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